The Tradition of Texts and Maps in Ptolemy’s Geography

Abstract

There remain today fifty-three Greek manuscripts of Ptolemy’s Geography,¹ none of which were written before the late thirteenth century. There is, therefore, a time span of about 1,000 years between the original work and the earliest extant manuscripts. The main lines of the textual tradition were outlined in the 1930s, in particular by Cuntz (1923), Schnabel (1930, 1938), and Fischer (1932a), and are—more or less—undisputed. However, debate on the relationship between text and maps, and especially the tradition of the maps themselves, is far from over.