MELA, Pomponius, and others

Pomponius Mela. Julius Solinus. Itinerarium...

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Giunta, Florence, 1519. Small octavo, italic letter, capital letters rubricated; with annotations, old and recent; an excellent copy in contemporary Italian vellum. Scarce edition of this important collection of classical geographical texts, including the especially famous works by Pomponius Mela and Julius Solinus. Pomponius Mela's work is the classic geographical text of the Middle Ages, which in part expounds the argument that the known landmasses in the northern hemisphere must have antipodean counterparts to balance them.

Pomponius Mela's view of the shape of the world incorporated a huge land mass surrounding the south pole - the "early notion of a fifth continent and that notion's important historical development as an intermingling of fact and fiction. The phantom of Terra Australis, an unknown south-land, haunted the minds and maps of cosmographers for more than two millennia... The landmasses of the northern hemisphere needed a counter-balance in the south. These speculations... were still influential in the eighteenth century until the time of James Cook. It was felt that an undiscovered southern continent had to exist because the known land masses of the southern hemisphere were not sufficient to balance those of the northern half of the globe..." (Schilder, Australia Unveiled, pp. 7-8).

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