THE AUTHOR, TO THE READER.

A decorative drop cap 'N' depicts a man in a scholar's study or library, seated at a desk near a window through which a landscape is visible.

This undertaking of ours is neither a new nor a solitary example. It has been attempted by many others, both in ancient times and more recently. The Suda A massive 10th-century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopaedia. records that a certain Diogenianus wrote an alphabetical work on rivers, lakes, springs, mountains, headlands, and the cities of the entire earth. Damastes of Sigeum wrote a catalog of nations and cities. Callimachus of Cyrene wrote on the rivers of the world, the origin of islands, and their changed names. Athenaeus noted that Hellanicus wrote a book on the names of nations. The commentator on Apollonius says that Hippias of Elis did the same. A certain Xenagoras wrote about islands. However, envious antiquity or the excessive negligence of men has not allowed these works to reach our times. We do possess the work of Vibius Sequester, who arranged into a list, as he says himself, rivers, springs, lakes, groves, marshes, mountains, and nations. But he provides only a few items out of many; indeed, he provides very few, and lists the names only. Giovanni Boccaccio The famous 14th-century Italian author of the Decameron. once followed in these footsteps, but with a somewhat more expansive style. Within the memory of our grandfathers, Zacharias Lilius of Vicenza gave us something similar in a small book titled A Brief Account of the World Original: "Orbis breuiarium.". Guglielmo Pastregio of Verona also did so in his short work On Origins. Both authors, however, worked with a very spare hand. Many learned men since then have exerted their efforts in the same arena within their dictionaries, lexicons, name-books, and what are called "poetic elucidators": Torrentinus, Elio Antonio de Nebrija, Conrad Gessner, Robert Estienne, and others. Yet none of these worked with enough vigor; they all treated the subject in passing, as if they were doing something else.

In former times, however, the man known as Stephanus of Byzantium had surpassed all these in diligence and the abundance of names in his volume On Cities Original: "περὶ πόλεων" (Peri polion).. But our age sees only a summary of this work, and a mutilated one at that (there is a large gap lacuna: A missing section in a manuscript or ancient text. in the letter K). Even if the complete and undamaged work of Stephanus were available, it is common knowledge that it could not satisfy the dignity of the subject. This is because he used only Greek authors. To complete this work, there are many things in Latin authors which are no less necessary than the Greek ones; I believe this fact is hidden from no one who thinks correctly about history or geography.

I read that Johann Wolf of Zurich collected an index of Greek names pertaining to geography from Ptolemy, Strabo, Pausanias, Stephanus, Eustathius, and several others. However, I have not had the chance to see this. Nor has any certain news regarding its publication reached my ears so far. Giovanni Francesco Quintiano also promised something great on this subject (as Conrad Gessner informs me), but he only promised it. The highly learned Wilhelm Xylander had begun a Geographical Dictionary Original: "Onomasticon Geographicum.", which was indeed a source of great hope for me. But perhaps hindered by other occupations, or, as I would more easily believe, snatched away by death, he did not publish it. This was truly a great loss to scholarship. If this man had brought his work to completion Original: "ad vmbilicum perduxisset." A Latin idiom meaning "to bring to the navel," or to finish a scroll completely., someone might perhaps have judged our work to be less necessary.

You have heard what others have promised, performed, or provided in this genre of writing: what has perished and what has survived to our times. Now, let us speak of our own method in this Treasury. First, we surveyed every kind of ancient writer, both sacred and secular (among whom were several not yet printed). Next, we looked at medieval writers, and then many more recent ones in every language. From the ancients, we have transferred all names of places into our work without omitting a single one. We took a large heap from the medieval period as well. From the recent authors, we took many, but only those that served to explain the sayings of the ancients. As a supplement, we added everything from ancient marbles, bronze tablets, coins of every ancient metal, and, to speak in a word, whatever could be gathered from every kind of ancient inscription in both languages Latin and Greek. that related in any way to our subject...