Germania Inferior ("Lower Germania") was a Roman province from AD 85 until the province was renamed Germania Secunda in the 4th century AD, on the west bank of the Rhine bordering the North Sea . The capital of the province was Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (modern-day Cologne ).
72-992: According to Ptolemy (2.9), Germania Inferior included the Rhine from its mouth up to the mouth of the Obringa , a river identified with either the Aar or the Moselle . The territory included modern-day Luxembourg , the southern Netherlands , part of Belgium , and part of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany , west of the Rhine. The principal settlements of the province were Castra Vetera and Colonia Ulpia Traiana (both near Xanten ), Coriovallum ( Heerlen ), Albaniana ( Alphen aan den Rijn ), Lugdunum Batavorum ( Katwijk ), Forum Hadriani ( Voorburg ), Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum ( Nijmegen ), Traiectum (Utrecht) , Atuatuca Tungrorum ( Tongeren ), Bona ( Bonn ), and Colonia Agrippinensis ( Cologne ),
144-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
216-522: A Greek copy of Planudes's maps in Florence in 1397. Berggren & Jones (2000) place these manuscripts into a stemma whereby U, K, F and N are connected with the activities of Maximos Planudes (c.1255-1305). From a sister manuscript to UKFN descends R, V, W & C, however the maps were either copied defectively for not at all. "Of the greatest importance for the text of the Geography" they state
288-506: A figure of 180,000 stadia for the circumference of the Earth, which he described as a "general consensus". Ptolemy rescaled experimentally obtained data in many of his works on geography, astrology, music, and optics. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and
360-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
432-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
504-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
576-576: A quarter of the globe. Ptolemy's work included a single large and less detailed world map and then separate and more detailed regional maps. The first Greek manuscripts compiled after Maximus Planudes 's rediscovery of the text had as many as 64 regional maps. The standard set in Western Europe came to be 26: 10 European maps, 4 African maps, and 12 Asian maps. As early as the 1420s, these canonical maps were complemented by extra-Ptolemaic regional maps depicting, e.g., Scandinavia . An outline of
648-688: A scribal error was made and Cattigara was located at eight and a half degrees South of the Equator. On Ptolemaic maps, such as that of Martellus, Catigara was located on the easternmost shore of the Mare Indicum, 180 degrees East of the Cape St Vincent at, due to the scribal error, eight and a half degrees South of the Equator. Catigara is also shown at this location on Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 world map, which avowedly followed
720-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
792-428: A stage when the manuscripts were too small to contain the maps. Planudes and his assistants therefore probably had no pictorial models, and the success of their enterprise is proof that Ptolemy succeeded in his attempt to encode the map in words and numbers. The copies of the maps in later manuscripts and printed editions of the Geography were reproduced from Planudes' reconstructions." Mittenhuber (2010) further divides
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#1732783341342864-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
936-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
1008-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
1080-399: Is a treatise on cartography and chorography , describing the methods used to assemble and arrange Ptolemy's data. From Book II through the beginning of Book VII, a gazetteer provides longitude and latitude values for the world known to the ancient Romans (the " ecumene "). The rest of Book VII provides details on three projections to be used for the construction of a map of
1152-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
1224-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
1296-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
1368-488: Is manuscript X ( Vat.Gr.191 ); "because it is the only copy that is uninfluenced by the Byzantine revision." e.g. the 13th-14th century corrections of Planudes, possibly associated with recreating the maps. Regarding the maps, they conclude that it was unlikely that extant maps survived from which the above stemma descends, even if maps existed in antiquity: "The transmission of Ptolemy's text certainly passed through
1440-800: Is of particular significance, because it contains many local names and coordinates that differ from the other manuscripts ... which cannot be explained by mere errors in the tradition.". Although no manuscripts survive from earlier than the late 13th century; there are references to the existence of ancient codicies in late antiquity. One such example is in an epistle by Cassiodorus (c.560 A.D.): “Tum, si vos notitiae nobilis cura inflammaverit, habetis Ptolemaei codicem, qui sic omnia loca evidenter expressit, ut eum cunctarum regionum paene incolam fuisse iudicetis. Eoque fit, ut uno loco positi, sicut monachos decet, animo percurratis, quod aliquorum peregrinatio plurimo labore collegit.”( Institutiones 1, 25) . The existence of ancient recensions that differ fundamentally to
1512-648: Is used now, though Ptolemy used fractions of a degree rather than minutes of arc. His Prime Meridian , of 0 longitude , ran through the Fortunate Isles , the westernmost land recorded, at around the position of El Hierro in the Canary Islands . The maps spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Fortunate Isles in the Atlantic to China . Ptolemy was aware that Europe knew only about
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#17327833413421584-488: The Canary Islands . He said that he had sailed 1100 leagues from the Canaries when he found Cuba in 1492. This was approximately where he thought the coast of eastern Asia would be found. On this basis of calculation he identified Hispaniola with Cipangu, which he had expected to find on the outward voyage at a distance of about 700 leagues from the Canaries. His later voyages resulted in further exploration of Cuba and in
1656-544: The Diocese of Gaul . Up to the end of Roman control, it was an intensely garrisoned province that was inhabited by Romans and Ripuarian Franks in the 5th century. Its capital remained at Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, which also became the seat of a Christian bishopric , which was in charge of an ecclesiastical province that survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire . After the final abandonment of
1728-705: The Geography in providing the coordinates for 545 cities and regional maps of the Nile , the Island of the Jewel , the Sea of Darkness, and the Sea of Azov . A 1037 copy of these are the earliest extant maps from Islamic lands. The text clearly states that al-Khwārazmī was working from an earlier map, although this could not have been an exact copy of Ptolemy's work: his Prime Meridian
1800-485: The Geography survives from earlier than the 13th century. A letter written by the Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes records that he searched for one for Chora Monastery in the summer of 1295; one of the earliest surviving texts may have been one of those he then assembled. In Europe, maps were sometimes redrawn using the coordinates provided by the text, as Planudes was forced to do. Later scribes and publishers could then copy these new maps, as Athanasius did for
1872-708: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
1944-499: The Islamic world . Alongside the works of Islamic scholars – and the commentary containing revised and more accurate data by Alfraganus – Ptolemy's work was subsequently highly influential on Medieval and Renaissance Europe. Versions of Ptolemy's work in antiquity were probably proper atlases with attached maps, although some scholars believe that the references to maps in the text were later additions. No Greek manuscript of
2016-732: The Magnus Sinus . This known portion of the world was comprised within 180 degrees. In his extreme east Ptolemy placed Serica (the Land of Silk), the Sinarum Situs (the Port of the Sinae ), and the emporium of Cattigara . On the 1489 map of the world by Henricus Martellus, which was based on Ptolemy's work, Asia terminated in its southeastern point in a cape, the Cape of Cattigara. Cattigara
2088-633: The Marvels of the Seven Climes to the End of Habitation . Surviving maps from the medieval period were not done according to mathematical principles. The world map from the 11th-century Book of Curiosities is the earliest surviving map of the Muslim or Christian worlds to include a geographic coordinate system but the copyist seems to have not understood its purpose, starting it from the left using twice
2160-585: The Tungri ) increased during Roman times, leading to the assimilation of all Celtic peoples in the area. In fact, Germania Inferior had Roman settlements since around 50 BC and was at first part of Gallia Belgica . It was only under Domitian (r. AD 81 – 96) that new territories were acquired, between the high valleys of the Rhine and the Danube, following the campaigns conducted by his generals in AD 83 – 85, which led to
2232-610: The ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
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2304-496: The emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus . The three earliest surviving texts with maps are those from Constantinople ( Istanbul ) based on Planudes's work. The first Latin translation of these texts was made in 1406 or 1407 by Jacobus Angelus in Florence , Italy , under the name Geographia Claudii Ptolemaei . It is not thought that his edition had maps, although Manuel Chrysoloras had given Palla Strozzi
2376-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
2448-483: The 12th century AD. However, no copy of that translation has survived. The Greek text of the Geography reached Florence from Constantinople in about 1400 and was translated into Latin by Jacobus Angelus of Scarperia around 1406. The first printed edition with maps, published in 1477 in Bologna , was also the first printed book with engraved illustrations. Many editions followed (more often using woodcut in
2520-429: The 2nd-century Roman Empire . Originally written by Claudius Ptolemy in Greek at Alexandria around 150 AD, the work was a revision of a now-lost atlas by Marinus of Tyre using additional Roman and Persian gazetteers and new principles. Its translation – Kitab Surat al-Ard – into Arabic by Al-Khwarismi in the 9th century was highly influential on the geographical knowledge and cartographic traditions of
2592-403: The 3rd century BC. Ptolemy improved the treatment of map projections . He provided instructions on how to create his maps in the first section of the work. The gazetteer section of Ptolemy's work provided latitude and longitude coordinates for all the places and geographical features in the work. Latitude was expressed in degrees of arc from the equator , the same system that
2664-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
2736-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
2808-563: The Elder demonstrated a reluctance to rely on the contemporary accounts of sailors and merchants who plied distant areas of the Indian Ocean , Marinus and Ptolemy betray a much greater receptiveness to incorporating information received from them. For instance, Grant Parker argues that it would be highly implausible for them to have constructed the Bay of Bengal as precisely as they did without
2880-553: The accounts of sailors. When it comes to the account of the Golden Chersonese (i.e. Malay Peninsula ) and the Magnus Sinus (i.e. Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea ), Marinus and Ptolemy relied on the testimony of a Greek sailor named Alexandros, who claimed to have visited a far eastern site called " Cattigara " (most likely Oc Eo , Vietnam , the site of unearthed Antonine -era Roman goods and not far from
2952-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
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3024-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
3096-568: The basis of his (now lost) Chorography of the Ecumene . Later imperial writers and mathematicians, however, seem to have restricted themselves to commenting on Ptolemy's text, rather than improving upon it; surviving records actually show decreasing fidelity to real position. Nevertheless, Byzantine scholars continued these geographical traditions throughout the Medieval period. Whereas previous Greco-Roman geographers such as Strabo and Pliny
3168-542: The capital of Germania Inferior. The first confrontations between a Roman army and the peoples of Germania Inferior occurred during Julius Caesar 's Gallic Wars . Caesar invaded the region in 57 BC and in the next three years annihilated several tribes, including the Eburones and the Menapii , whom Caesar called "Germanic" but who probably were Celtic or at least mixed Celtic-Germanic. Germanic influence (mainly through
3240-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
3312-700: The creation of two new imperial provinces, lower and upper Germany. Although this region had been occupied since the reign of Augustus , it wasn't formally established as a Roman province until around AD 85, with its capital at Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (modern-day Cologne ). It later became an imperial province . It lay north of Germania Superior ; these two together made up Lesser Germania . The adjective Inferior refers to its downstream position. The army of Germania Inferior, typically shown on inscriptions as EX.GER.INF. ( Exercitus Germaniae Inferioris ), included several legions at various times: of these, Legions I Minervia and XXX Ulpia Victrix were
3384-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
3456-460: The discovery of South and Central America . At first South America, the Mundus Novus ( New World ) was considered to be a great island of continental proportions; but as a result of his fourth voyage , it was apparently considered to be identical with the great Upper India peninsula ( India Superior ) represented by Behaim – the Cape of Cattigara. This seems to be the best interpretation of
3528-520: The early days), some following traditional versions of the maps, and others updating them. An edition printed at Ulm in 1482 was the first one printed north of the Alps . Also in 1482, Francesco Berlinghieri printed the first edition in vernacular Italian . Ptolemy had mapped the whole world from the Fortunatae Insulae ( Cape Verde or Canary Islands ) eastward to the eastern shore of
3600-474: The encyclopedia follows, with links to the appropriate Misplaced Pages article. The original treatise by Marinus of Tyre that formed the basis of Ptolemy's Geography has been completely lost. A world map based on Ptolemy was displayed in Augustodunum ( Autun , France ) in late Roman times. Pappus , writing at Alexandria in the 4th century, produced a commentary on Ptolemy's Geography and used it as
3672-663: The extensive additions to the Ptolemaic map shown on the 1492 globe of Martin Behaim . The fact that Ptolemy did not represent an eastern coast of Asia made it admissible for Behaim to extend that continent far to the east. Behaim’s globe placed Marco Polo’s Mangi and Cathay east of Ptolemy’s 180th meridian, and the Great Khan’s capital, Cambaluc ( Beijing ), on the 41st parallel of latitude at approximately 233 degrees East. Behaim allowed 60 degrees beyond Ptolemy’s 180 degrees for
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#17327833413423744-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
3816-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
3888-409: The intended scale and then (apparently realizing his mistake) giving up halfway through. Its presence does strongly suggest the existence of earlier, now-lost maps which had been mathematically derived in the manner of Ptolemy, al-Khwārazmi, or Suhrāb. There are surviving reports of such maps. Ptolemy's Geography was translated from Arabic into Latin at the court of King Roger II of Sicily in
3960-467: The length of a degree instead of the longer degree of Ptolemy, and by adopting Marinus of Tyre ’s longitude of 225 degrees for the east coast of the Magnus Sinus . This resulted in a considerable eastward advancement of the longitudes given by Martin Behaim and other contemporaries of Columbus. By some process Columbus reasoned that the longitudes of eastern Asia and Cipangu respectively were about 270 and 300 degrees east, or 90 and 60 degrees west of
4032-613: The mainland of Asia and 30 degrees more to the east coast of Cipangu (Japan). Cipangu and the mainland of Asia were thus placed only 90 and 120 degrees, respectively, west of the Canary Islands. The Codex Seragliensis was used as the base of a new edition of the work in 2006. This new edition was used to "decode" Ptolemy's coordinates of Books 2 and 3 by an interdisciplinary team of TU Berlin , presented in publications in 2010 and 2012. Christopher Columbus modified this geography further by using 53⅔ Italian nautical miles as
4104-535: The most permanent. The Roman Navy's Classis Germanica (Germanic fleet), charged with patrolling the Rhine and the North Sea coast, were based at Castra Vetera and later at Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensis. As attested in the early 5th century document Notitia Dignitatum , the province was renamed Germania Secunda ( Germania II ) in the 4th century. It was administered by a consularis and formed part of
4176-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
4248-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
4320-590: The province it became the core of the Frankish Kingdom . Geography (Ptolemy) The Geography ( Ancient Greek : Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις , Geōgraphikḕ Hyphḗgēsis , lit. "Geographical Guidance"), also known by its Latin names as the Geographia and the Cosmographia , is a gazetteer , an atlas , and a treatise on cartography , compiling the geographical knowledge of
4392-479: The region of Jiaozhi in northern Vietnam where ancient Chinese sources claim several Roman embassies first landed in the 2nd and 3rd centuries). Muslim cartographers were using copies of Ptolemy's Almagest and Geography by the 9th century. At that time, in the court of the caliph al-Maʾmūm , al-Khwārazmī compiled his Book of the Depiction of the Earth ( Kitab Surat al-Ard ) which mimicked
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#17327833413424464-403: The sketch map made by Alessandro Zorzi on the advice of Bartholomew Columbus (Christopher's brother) around 1506, which bears an inscription saying that according to the ancient geographer Marinus of Tyre and Christopher Columbus the distance from Cape St Vincent on the coast of Portugal to Cattigara on the peninsula of India Superior was 225 degrees, while according to Ptolemy the same distance
4536-510: The stemma into two recensions of the original c.AD 150 lost work: Ξ and Ω (c.3rd/4th cent., lost). Recension Ω contains most of the extant manuscripts and is subdivided into a further two groups: Δ and Π . Group Δ contains parchment manuscripts from the end of the thirteenth century, which are the earliest extant manuscripts of the Geography; these are U, K & F. Recension, Ξ, is represented by one codex only, X. Mittenhuber agrees with Berggren & Jones, stating that "The so-called Codex X
4608-446: The surviving manuscript tradition can be seen in the epitomes of Markianos by Stephanus : "Καὶ ἄλλοι οὕτως διὰ του π Πρετανίδες νῆσοι, ὡς Μαρκιανὸς καὶ Πτολεμαῖος ." The tradition preserved within the stemma of surviving (13th-14th century) manuscripts by Stückelberger & Grasshoff only preserves " Β " and not " Π " recentions of " Βρεττανικήσ ". The Geography consists of three sections, divided among 8 books. Book I
4680-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
4752-559: The tradition of Ptolemy. Ptolemy's information was thereby misinterpreted so that the coast of China, which should have been represented as part of the coast of eastern Asia, was falsely made to represent an eastern shore of the Indian Ocean. As a result, Ptolemy implied more land east of the 180th meridian and an ocean beyond. Marco Polo ’s account of his travels in eastern Asia described lands and seaports on an eastern ocean apparently unknown to Ptolemy. Marco Polo’s narrative authorized
4824-455: The world, varying in complexity and fidelity. Book VIII constitutes an atlas of regional maps. The maps include a recapitulation of some of the values given earlier in the work, which were intended to be used as captions to clarify the map's contents and maintain their accuracy during copying. Maps based on scientific principles had been made in Europe since the time of Eratosthenes in
4896-535: Was 10° east of Ptolemy's, he adds some places, and his latitudes differ. C.A. Nallino suggests that the work was not based on Ptolemy but on a derivative world map, presumably in Syriac or Arabic . The coloured map of al-Maʾmūm constructed by a team including al-Khwārazmī was described by the Persian encyclopædist al-Masʿūdī around 956 as superior to the maps of Marinus and Ptolemy, probably indicating that it
4968-661: Was 180 degrees. Prior to the 16th century, knowledge of geography in the Ottoman Empire was limited in scope, with almost no access to the works of earlier Islamic scholars that superseded Ptolemy. His Geography would again be translated and updated with commentary into Arabic under Mehmed II , who commissioned works from Byzantine scholar George Amiroutzes in 1465 and the Florentine humanist Francesco Berlinghieri in 1481. There are two related errors: This suggests Ptolemy rescaled his longitude data to fit with
5040-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
5112-433: Was built along similar mathematical principles. It included 4530 cities and over 200 mountains. Despite beginning to compile numerous gazetteers of places and coordinates indebted to Ptolemy, Muslim scholars made almost no direct use of Ptolemy's principles in the maps which have survived. Instead, they followed al-Khwārazmī's modifications and the orthogonal projection advocated by Suhrāb's early 10th-century treatise on
5184-584: Was understood by Ptolemy to be a port on the Sinus Magnus, or Great Gulf, the actual Gulf of Thailand, at eight and a half degrees north of the Equator, on the coast of Cambodia, which is where he located it in his Canon of Famous Cities . It was the easternmost port reached by shipping trading from the Graeco-Roman world to the lands of the Far East. In Ptolemy's later and better-known Geography ,
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