Artemido'rus
6. Of EPHESUS, a Greek geographer, who lived about B. C. 100.
He made voyages round the coasts of the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea, and apparently even in the southern ocean.
He also visited Iberia and Gaul, and corrected the accounts of Eratosthenes respecting those countries.
Works
Geography
We know that in his description of Asia he stated the distances of places from one another, and that the countries beyond the river Tanais were unknown to him.
The work in which he gave the results of his investigations, is called by Marcianus of Heracleia, a
περίπλους, and seems to be the same as the one more commonly called called
τὰ γεωγραφούμενα, or
τὰ τῆς γεωγραφίας Βιβλία.
It consisted of eleven books, of which Marcianus afterwards made an abridgement.
The original work, which was highly valued by the ancients, and is quoted in innumerable passages by Strabo, Stephanus of Byzantium, Pliny, Isidorus, and others, is lost ; but we possess many small fragments and some larger ones of Marcianus' abridgement, which contain the periplus of the Pontus Euxeinus, and accounts of Bithynia and Paphlagonia.
The loss of this important work is to be regretted, not only on account of the geographical information which it contained, but also because the author entered into the description of the manners and costumes of the nations he spoke of.
Editions
The fragments of Artemidorus were first collected and published by D. Höschel in his Geographica, Aug. Vindel. 1600, 4to. The best collection is that in Hudson's Geographi Minores, vol. i. Two small fragments, not contained in Hudson, have been published by Van Goens in his edition of Porphyrius's Antrum Nympharum, p. 87, and
a third, containing a description of the Nile is printed in Aretin's Beilträge zur Gesch. und Lit. vol. ii. p. 49, &c. (Vossius,
de Hist. Graec. p. 185, with the notes of Westermann.)
Athenaeus (iii. p. 111) ascribes to this Artemidorus a work entitled
Ἰωνικὰ ὑπομνήματα.
Further Information
Comp. Ukert,
Geogr. der Griech. u. Röm. 1.2, p. 141, &c., 250.
