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33
TECHNICAL WRITING
1. POMPONIUS MELA
The earliest surviving Latin work on geography, Pomponius Mela's De
chorographia, 'Of description of countries', 1 has not won the approval of
geographers, though Pliny the Elder, hardly a discriminating critic, seems to
have taken it seriously. The work is no systematic and professional treatise,
but an outline for general readers, and it offers little new material, being largely
based on written sources, including, though not necessarily at first hand,
Nepos and Varro. Mela states (1.2) that he aims to describe the world's main
divisions, then its coastal areas in more detail (cf. 1.24), and to add memorable
particulars of individual regions and their inhabitants. His worst fault is that he
supplies no measurements. And he was sadly misguided in basing his detailed
survey on a sort of circumnavigation, after the manner of the Greek writings
ascribed to Scylax and Scymnus, for as a result important inland areas, such as
Bactria and Dacia, are wholly omitted. Again, in his choice of ethnographical
matter he is quite uncritical. Judged even on its own terms, as a piece of popularization,
the De chorographia cannot be applauded: the exposition might
have been clearer and the expression more relaxed.
For all his errors (e.g. 2.57), obscurities, and omissions, Mela still possesses
some interest. Occasionally (e.g. 3.31 on the Baltic and 3.38 on the Caspian)
traces of unusually accurate information have somehow got through to him.
And, while he will readily swallow fables or travellers' tales (e.g. 1.47 on the
Blemyes and 3.81 on the Pygmies) or take over unacknowledged from Herodotus
much of his account of the Scythians, he also preserves information not
found elsewhere about places and beliefs (e.g. 3.19 on the Druids and 3.48 on
the island of Sena). Again, some may detect merit in his elaborate descriptions,
like that of the Corycian cave (1.72—6), even if they are rather out of proportion
in a work of three short books.
The deprecation of Mela's preface is part of a conventional pose: having
1 Chorographia differs from geography, which is more general, and topography, which is more
restricted. But the differences cannot be pressed very far. In so far as they are valid, chorographia fits
what Mela produces well enough.
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