Abraham Ortelius — Epitome du theatre du monde (1601)

This map contains and exhibits the image of the entire globe of the earth and the circumambient Ocean; which whole globe of the earth the Ancients (to whom the new world was not yet known) divided into three parts: namely, Africa, Europe, and Asia. But America having been discovered, our age has added it as a fourth part, and awaits a fifth part lying under the Southern pole. Gerardus Mercator, the leader of the geographers of our time, in his never-sufficiently-praised Universal Map, distinguishes this globe of the earth into three Continents: the first he calls that which we said the Ancients divided into three parts, and from which it is established by the Holy Scriptures that the human race took its origin; the second, which today we call America or the West Indies; the third he calls the Southern land, which some name Magellanica, detected until now by few shores. Antiquity taught, and the recent age asserts, that this globe contains in circumference, where it is most wide, 5,400 German miles or 21,600 Italian miles. And these many portions of the earth (as Pliny says in his second book of Natural History), or rather, as many have handed down, these points of the world (for there is nothing else that is earth in the universe), this is the material of our glory, this is our seat: here we carry out honors, here we exercise powers, here we desire wealth, here the human race is in tumult, here we stir up even civil wars, and make the earth more spacious by mutual slaughter. And to pass over the public furies of nations, this earth in which we push back neighbors and stealthily dig up the sod of a neighbor into our own soil, so that he who has measured his fields most broadly and driven neighbors beyond his borders, how great a part of the earth does he enjoy? Or when he has propagated his avarice to his measure, what portion of it does he hold when he is dead? Thus far he.

A woodcut map of the world in an oval projection, framed within a rectangle. The title "TYPVS ORBIS TERRARVM" (Type of the World Globe) is prominently displayed in a cartouche at the top. The map shows the continents of "AMERICA", "AFRICA", "ASIA", and "EUROPA". A massive southern continent is labeled "Terra Australis nondum cognita" (Southern land not yet known), and northern areas are marked "Terra Septentrionalis incognita" (Unknown northern land). Water bodies include "Mar del Zur" (South Sea), "Mar del Nort" (North Sea), "Oceanus Æthiopicus" (Ethiopian Ocean), and "Mar di India" (Indian Sea). Major latitudinal lines are present: "CIRCVLVS ARCTICVS" (Arctic Circle), "TROPICVS CANCRI" (Tropic of Cancer), "ÆQVINOCTIALIS" (Equator), "TROPICVS CAPRICORNI" (Tropic of Capricorn), and "CIRCVLVS ANTARCTICVS" (Antarctic Circle). Cardinal directions "SEPTENTRIO" (North), "MERIDIES" (South), "ORIENS" (East), and "OCCIDENS" (West) are noted around the frame.