III. Observations on Chapter V. 31, Britannia, in the Ravenna Cosmography

Abstract

The Ravenna Cosmography is apparently a valuable work, since it contains a large number of place-names of which many are not known in other sources. Unfortunately its bare enumerations, generally lacking in any significant detail, are often disfigured by serious errors; an over-all view of the work makes these show up more clearly than does any partial study. When the names peculiar to the work really existed, it is possible to find their sense by etymology, and by toponymic study one can locate them on the ground, but then one faces the problem of their provenance, perhaps in some source as yet unexplored or lost, since the Cosmographer was nothing more than a compiler.Our answer depends on two preliminary definitions, that concerning the date of the Cosmography in relation to that of its possible sources, and the role of the unknown authors cited in Books II–IV. Since Book V, despite its relationship to the previous Books, makes no mention of these, a discussion of this highly controversial matter would be out of place here. It should be noted merely that the coincidence between the information given from unknown sources and the unknown authors has not yet been proved.