PROLEGOMENA.

Which authority, although it is not small, must nevertheless be guarded against, as I said, lest we think it greater than is just. Which, however, most learned men once admitted in themselves. 1 Certainly, the ancient geographers each drew many things from previous writers, but it was far from the case that they would describe any one person word for word, with no regard for anyone else. 2 Therefore, since in the Dimensuration and in the Division and in Orosius there are found places that return to Agrippa from the ultimate origin, do not conclude from there with Schweder p. 42 that these whole little books, nor with Partsch p. 8 that the entire Dimensuration, were drawn from Agrippa. What more, not even Solinus drew all his things from Pliny? 'Following the monuments of the ancients, we improve the work [or make it worse!]', see v. 10 p. 20. Julius Honorius, however (which Carolus Pertz was the first to recognize, On the Cosmography of Ethicus p. 18), is entirely alien to Agrippa; whom learned men, led by false reasoning—since they thought the narrative about the four surveyors, which exists only in the second recension B of Honorius and thence in the so-called Aethicus, to be connected with Honorius from the origin (which, however, does not even itself pertain to Agrippa)—did not proceed from Honorius, whose recension B had not yet been published, but wrongly from the masked Aethicus, and joined them with a certain bond to Agrippa's painted world. But it must be held tooth and nail that not even the slightest trace indicates that Agrippa wished to divide the earth into four parts. Petersen said that Solinus, Capella, Isidore, and others (see what a lack of sound judgment he has in the fact that he divines that his 'Augustus' or 'Agrippa' composed a great work, by which he described the earth according to the four regions of the sky and immediately after that according to the three parts, Europe, Asia, and Africa! 3) and Jordanes, Muellenhoff p. 29, depend on Agrippa. It is more serious that they think the same of Pliny. That, indeed, is probable, that he took some measurements which he cites without a name from Agrippa; for my part, however, besides those which are proven by the agreement of the Dimensuration or the Division, I dare not refer any for certain to him, since Pliny drew most measurements from Greek writers and himself predicts in III 2 and VI 141 that he follows primarily the authors who lived there in individual lands, while in describing Italy III 46 sqq. he follows Augustus (cf. p. 8): therefore, not much remains that can be referred to Agrippa exempt from all doubt. 4 I have added, however...

1) To whom Fr. Philippi spoke in opposition in our time, but he did not carry the matter to the end. Partsch spoke most prudently about that matter on p. 75 sqq.

2) Well about that matter Mannert p. 5 cf. Plin. III 16.

3) The same, when he thinks that much redounds to the knowledge of Agrippa or Honorius from Albertus Magnus and Felix Malleolus, is egregiously mistaken. All those things he praises are mere trifles of the Middle Ages.

4) cf. also Detlefsen p. XII, by whom Partsch's opinion on p. 3 is refuted.