Customer Reviews

The Geography

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This book ,finally translated into English language, has for centuries been missing in the live of English speaking people. The knowledge other Europeans had for many centuries about their early history has been virtually missing from the English speaking world, particularly the United States. One has to wonder ,why ? In the 150's AD Claudius Ptolemy clearly shows the people of Europe and the world. Ptolemy shows Magna Germania at the Vistula river (Vistula being the Gothic name) and verifies the recorded history of Tacitus who in 98 AD recorded the Britons and the Germanic people in the Agricola and the Germania.

Ptolemy Geography was not re-discovered until the mid 1500's. Nevertheless the original river and place names remained from original times throughout the centuries of attacks from the east on Germania, which brought in many new people.

It also gives great information on all parts of the then known world 1900 years ago .

The map drawings , today so different, are a real challenge. But the original place names help to find the correct places.

Ptolemy should be required study in every school class .

Ptolomy stands as one of the most important individuals in the history of natural science and philosophy. He wrote books on astrology, astronomy, and geography, and each of these contributes a significant amount of knowledge to our understanding of the shape of natural sciences in Europe. He argues clearly based on travel observations that the earth must be a sphere, that Venus and Mercury must revolve around the sun (I think that's in Tetrabiblos iirc).

This work is similarly no less important. In it, Ptolomy set out to map all of the known world including all of Europe, parts of Africa, and parts of Asia. The maps are important because they provide us a view of the ancient world through the eyes of this great scholar, and they help us understand the general geography of Roman historians generally.

The maps in this book are quite clearly reproduced in a scaled-down format and are hard to read. They are helpful nonetheless in general historical studies. The rest of the book is largely a collection of latitudes and longitudes for cities. While this isn't the most exciting reading in the world, it's a handy reference.