PROLEGOMENA.

of writing and painting: but that he 'sent [them] to measure the provinces' is neither handed down, nor does it have any numbers i.e., evidence of truth. Dicuil also did not understand another thing, when he translated 'ter quinis aperit cum fascibus annum' 'he opens the year with thrice five bundles [consulships]' as 'in the fifteenth year of his reign.' All these things are, as is proper, missing in the Divisio. 1) — It must be added at the end that the Dimensuratio has some things in common with Orosius's Cosmography, especially in the description of islands; from the same, Dicuil added a few things. As for what I think about the name of the divine Augustus (Div. 1), see p. XI. Certainly, it will be clear at first glance that the beginning of the Divisio 1–2 is taken from Pliny III 3, 'The entire circuit of the earth is divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, Africa' 5, 'First therefore about Europe' 3, 'and the Gaditanian strait,' unless I am mistaken, for which reason chapter 1 is also not difficult to derive from Pliny III 17, nor will it be able to be proven that Agrippa began the work from Spain on that basis.

Let us approach the Cosmography of Julius Honorius, 'orator of both arts,' 2) which, published by his disciple against the author's will, shows us clearly the scholastic treatment of geography as it was in the poverty of the falling Roman Empire. For it names and counts the seas, islands, mountains, provinces, towns, rivers, and peoples of the world divided into four parts or 'oceans'; but, to say nothing of the fact that some things are obscure, he also omitted many more serious things, inserted rather trivial ones, touched upon Italy with almost no word, and proceeded here without any order and there without any reason. Since he was for the most part content with the mere mention of names, he entered a different path only in the matter of rivers. For he added the measurements of rivers

1) Nor does the poet Sedulius have anything to do with this poem, whom they are accustomed to cite here even in our own times: for Dicuil only introduced our Sedulius, i.e., the Christian, here for the sake of excusing a certain license he believes to be metrical.
2) Teuffel, Hist. Litt. Rom. c. 360 n. 10, wrongly confuses this orator Julius with Julius Titianus, 'who in the age of Emperor Maximin wrote many things, including 'most beautiful books of the provinces' (Julius Capitolinus, Maximin. 27, 5) inscribed with the name Chorographia, according to Servius on Virgil's Aeneid IV 42: 'The Barcaei... according to Titianus in his Chorographia once overcame the Phoenicians in a naval battle'. From the same work, it seems, Gregory of Tours took these things (On the Course of the Stars, c. 30) 'Aetna... and that Julius Titianus remembers this mountain in these words: 'four greatest mountains in Sicily, Eryx, Nebrodes, Neptunius, and Aetna. Which one sees more often rolling flames from the highest peak. And this is to be believed by the faith of the city of Centuripa situated nearby: although when it was first announced at Rome that Aetna had burned, it was treated as an omen." I will not add the remaining fragments of Titianus to this passage corrected by me, because they do not pertain to geography.