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The Iberian Peninsula

in Ptolemy’s Geography

Olivier Defaux

BERLIN STUDIES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

composed his

Geography

in the

city of Alexandria, one of the most prominent intellec-

tual centres of the Roman Empire. His work o ers a

comprehensive description of the known world as well

as insight into the practice of scholarly geography dur-

ing the second century

. Ptolemy’s most important

innovation in this ﬁeld was his use of geographical co-

ordinates to create maps of the world, and his catalogue,

with its latitudes and longitudes of thousands of locali-

ties, is one of our most valuable sources on the antique

oikoumenē.

Very little is known, however, about the

sources and working methods that Ptolemy employed

to produce his

Geography.

This book focuses on Ptole-

my’s description of the Iberian peninsula and examines

two problematic and interlinked topics relating to the

origins of the catalogue of localities: Ptolemy’s sources

and scientiﬁc methods on the one hand, and the textual

transmission of the

Geography,

from Ptolemy to the

extant manuscripts, on the other.

The Iberian Peninsula in

Ptolemy’s Geography

Olivier Defaux