"Translated from the Latin (1587) by Arthur Golding. A facsimile reproduction with an intrduction by George Kish." - [From the 1957 facsimile]

Caius Julius Solinus' Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium is a description of the lands and peoples, of the products and marvels, and of the world known to third-century Romans. The book enjoyed unabated popularity for over a thousand years. Solinus' word was taken for unchallenged truth by the great bishop Isidore of Seville, when he wrote his encyclopedic Etymologiae in the seventh century. Solinus' statements are mirrored with equal faith in the great world maps of the schoolmen of the late Middle Ages and in the Hereford and Ebstorf maps of the thirteenth century. His tales, be they ever so tall, appealed to the imagination of the men of the Dark Ages, and the book was still of enough interest to warrant reprinting both in the original Latin and in translations into the languages spoken in sixteenth-century Europe. Yet if 'books have their fate,' surely this one does not deserve the place of honor it held for so long. It is a strange hotchpotch of a few facts and scores of fictitious statements. It is an inferior compilation, not only by the standards of our time but even by comparison with the works of Greek and Roman writers who had preceded the author by centuries. Still, it would be misleading to judge Solinus' book as we would the geographies of Herodotus or Strabo. This work was written in a time of stress. It is an image of the fabulous and unattainable, destined to appeal to men whose own world offered so little to distract the imagination. - [Kish, Introduction]

Language: English

LCCN: 55-10771; LC: PA6696.S5E51587