DE SITU ORBIS

8vo, pp. [xxiv], 87, 116 [index], [1] blank; woodcut head- and tailpieces; occasional spotting and browning, but largely clean and fresh; initialed exlibris stamp on title-page, paste-downs covered in pencilled mathematical notes; in contemporary half vellum, marbled boards; some wear but still an attractive copy.

Second printing of this new and rare edition by the Lutheran theologian and philosopher Adam Heinrich Meißner (or Meisner, 1711-1782) of Pomponius Mela's geographical treatise, the earliest surviving Latin work on geography.

Although Meißner offers a brief preface, in which he surveys some of the previous editions of the work, and the literature that it had generated, the main attraction of his edition lies in his comprehensive indexes, which take up more than half the volume. The first is just a table of contents, but the second, over 29 pages, gives quick access to every aspect of Pomponius' work, from the physical (Fons Nili III, 9, 71) to the human (feroces homines, II, 2, 12, or, in Ethiopia, feminae hirsutae III, 9, 51). A third and final index follows, with names in Latin and, often, Greek.

Meißner's edition first appeared in 1738, and was reprinted again in 1756. All printings are very scarce. Meißner was a follower of Wolff, and his other works include a Philosophisches Lexicon aus Christian Wolffs sämtlichen deutschen Schriften (1737).

OCLC records no copies outside Continental Europe, with just a single copy of the 1738 printing anywhere, at the Biblioteca comunale in Trento.