Mela, Pomponius (? - 45 CE)

Pomponius Mela (died 45 CE) was the first Roman geographer. He produced a short work, De situ orbis libri III, which would continue to be an authority well into the 16th century; geographers such as Ortelius would continue to mine Mela's work for data where modern authorities remained silent. Apart from Pliny's Historia naturalis Mela's work is the only formal geographical work in Classical Latin, and as such it remained in the curriculum well into the 19th century.