2 88 GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE. 



This abundance of charts and maps, especially in countries which 

 possessed a navy, explains how it was that copper engraved maps were almost 

 contemporaneous with printing in movable type, which was invented in 1440, 

 but kept a secret by the town of Mayenne until 1466. The first edition 

 of Ptolemy's Cosmography .was printed in folio at Vicenza, by Hermann 

 Levilapis of Cologne, in 1462 ; but this edition had no maps. Nicholas 

 Denis the Benedictine had, however, composed for Ptolemy's book maps 

 which were engraved on copper by Andrea Beniucasa. But in the mean- 

 while a new set of maps, also intended for Ptolemy's book, was admirably 

 drawn by the printer, Conrad Sweynheym, the associate of Pannartz, who 

 had removed his presses to Rome ; and these maps, numbering twenty-seven, 

 in which the letters were stamped with jewellers' punches and hammered, 

 were completed by the Alsacian Arnold Buckinck, to illustrate the edition of 

 Ptolemy which was printed at Eome under the superintendence, so far as 

 the letterpress was concerned, of Domitius Calderini, and which appeared 

 in 1478. Other editions, with maps engraved on wood and coloured with the 

 paint-brush, appeared in succession in Italy and Germany (Fig. 204). The 

 Greek text of Ptolemy was carefully revised by the geographers, who sought 

 to amend and interpret it, in order to improve the Latin translation, which 

 was continually being reprinted by the thousand ; for the Greek text was not 

 printed until 1533. 



The publication of the Latin translation of Ptolemy was followed by that 

 of several ancient geographers, and these primitive editions testified to the 

 sympathy of the lettered public for geographical science. The Popes Paul II. 

 and Sixtus IV. gladly accepted the dedication of the editions which Conrad 

 Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz printed at Rome. Strabo, translated into 

 Latin, appeared in 1469 ; Pliny in 1473 ; Solinus, at Milan, in 1471, and at 

 Paris in 1473. These works were also reprinted at Venice, where they were 

 eagerly bought up. The study of geography at this period held a large place ( 

 in the system of public education, and what proves it even more clearly than 

 contemporary evidence is the quantity of small editions of Pomponius Mela 

 which were printed for use in the universities throughout Europe. 



There can be no doubt that this profusion of maps and books on geography 

 gave a general impulse to sea voyages and expeditions. The Portuguese, 

 after spending a whole century in their discovery of the western coasts of 

 Africa, prepared to push forward into the Indian Ocean by way of the Cape 



