MERCATOR, ORTELIUS, AND THEIR SUCCESSORS 119 



deal with modern maps, the maps accompanying Ptolemy's 

 ^Geography', and finally maps of ancient geography. The first 

 to appear was his edition of the Ptolemy maps, 1578, 

 mainly based on earlier printed editions. The maps were 

 redrawn on a trapezoidal projection instead of the usual recti- 

 linear projection, with a central meridian and two parallels at 

 right angles truly divided. In the year in which the Ptolemy 

 edition appeared, Mercator was already at work on the modern 

 maps, but the labour on them was prolonged beyond his 

 expectations, partly through difficulties in obtaining original 

 maps and travel narratives and in finding engravers, and partly 

 because he was obliged to support himself by other work. It 

 was not therefore until 1585, when he was seventy-three years 

 of age, that the first part of the collection, to which he later 

 gave the title 'Atlas', appeared at Duisburg. This contained 

 three sections, each with a separate title-page, covering France 

 (Gallia), Belgium (Belgia Inferior) and Germany — fifty-one 

 maps in all. Four years later, he published the second part — 

 Italy, Slavonia, and Greece in twenty-two maps. Finally in 

 1595, a year after his death, his heirs published the complete 

 work with a general title-page, 'Atlas sive cosmographicae 

 meditationes de fabrica mundi et fabricati figura'. This was 

 the first time the term 'Atlas' was applied to a collection of 

 maps. The title-page shows the figure of a man bearing the 

 globe upon his shoulders — though Keuning states that the 

 name was derived from a mythical astronomer-king of Libya, 

 who was said to have made the first celestial globe. The Latin 

 sub -title of the third section, added to the two already published 

 to form the complete work, may be translated "The new geo- 

 graphy of the whole world". The section comprised thirty-four 

 maps. Five of these were by Mercator's son, Rumold, and 

 two grandsons; these consisted of maps of the world and of 

 the four continents based on earlier works of Mercator. The 

 remaining twenty-nine had been completed by him before his 

 death; sixteen were of the British Isles, the remainder of 

 northern Europe. 



Mercator's atlas was not at first in great demand; one 

 reason no doubt was the manner of its publication in sections 

 which were really separate small atlases of individual countries. 



