192 



A. D. 161. 



without any interference of the officers of the exchequer : and he or- 

 dered, that thofe who were guilty of plundering wrecks fhould be fe- 

 verely puniihed. Thefe laws he borrowed from the Rhodian code, 

 which he made the ftandand of his condud: in maritime affairs. When 

 Eudaemon, a merchant of Nicomedia, complained to him, that, after 

 fuffering fhipwreck, he had been plundered in the Cyclades by the im- 

 perial officers, he replied, that he indeed was lord of the earth, but that 

 the fea was governed by the Rhodian laws, and that his caufe flaould be 

 determined by them. 



The emperor Antoninus alfo attended carefully to the respiration of the 

 roads ; and thence it is exceedingly probable, that the work defcribing all 

 the roads with their ftages, and intermediate diftances, and alfo the mari- 

 time ftations for veflels, throughout the Roman empire, which is fo well 

 known to the learned, under the name of the Itinerary of Antoninus, and 

 is fo ufeful in illuflrating antient geography, was compiled under his 

 authority, if not under that of his predeceffor, and has been occafional- 

 ly renewed, with alterations adapted to the times, though ftill bearing 

 the original name of Antoninus, juil as almanacks, and other modern 

 periodical compilations, retain the names of the original undertakers of 

 them through all their renovations *. 



From this Itinerary, and alfo from the more copious Itinerary of Bri- 

 tain, drawn up by a Roman commander in this ifland, and happily ref- 

 cued from oblivion by Richard of Cirencefter, London appears to have 

 been already the moft important city in the ifland, as it is the center 

 of a greater number of roads than any other. 



In the reign of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, flouriflied Ptolemy, 

 a Grecian native of Egypt, the moft celebrated aftronomer and geogra- 

 pher of antiquity, and, after Hipparchus, whofe works are loft, the firft 

 who applied graduation to maps, and reduced geography to fome de- 

 gree of regularity : fo that his works were defervedly entitled to the 

 pre-eminent rank they held for fourteen centuries as the ftandard in 

 thofe fciences. The copies of them abound in errors, as may be ex- 

 pedled from the frequent tranfcription of a work much in requeft, con- 

 lifting almoft entirely of tables of names and numbers. But, if ex- 

 amined with due care, and proper allowances, they will be foimd not 

 fo inaccurate or deftitute of information, as fome have rather raflily 

 pronounced them. The moft confpicuous of his errors are in the Brit- 



• It was a part of the duty of a Roman gene- 

 ral to have accurate furvcys made of all the roads 

 in the country under his command, with particu- 

 lar dcfcriptions and maps. \_y'gct. de re mllitari, 

 /.. iii, c. 6.3 Ae a thing done of courfe, it is 

 only mentioned by hiftorianB, when an uncom- 

 monly great, or univcrfal, furvey or reparation of 

 the roade was made : and fuch a great work was 



undertaken by Trajan ; [Aurel. Vi^or de Cas. — 

 Galen. L. ix, c. 8 j and it is probable, that tiie 

 finifliinjr hand was put to it in the reign of Mar- 

 cus. [See Jul. Capitol, in M. yfnton.J Another 

 meafurement of the provinces of the world was 

 made by order of Tiieodofuis. \_Duuil, quoted 

 in IVare't Hilerma,p. 101.] 



