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Ptolemy's Geography — Index of Places

A Few Tips

Various problems, first with the manuscripts of Ptolemy, then the Stevenson translation followed on some pages of this site, as well as with variant names in Antiquity, and uncertainties of translation and occasional laziness or oversight on my part make the following tips helpful:

Spellings vary.
Ptolemy's spelling of the various placenames is not necessarily the one currently favored by scholars or found in the popular press; also, the New York Public Library manuscript that Stevenson appears to have used (in part) — more about that later, I'm afraid! — appears to be of a less good family.

So I've added some of the better-known forms in the index, but here are some common options:

• Initial J and I are interchangeable. If you don't find Julia. . ., look for Iulia. . .
• Sometimes o and a interchange. For example, my text of Ptolemy lists Juliobona as Iuliobana.
• Similarly, sometimes i, y and u interchange.
• Forms in Novio. . . often appear as Noeo. . . or even Neo. . . .

Forms vary.
Stevenson often flowed with the case inflections; when I knew what the nominative was, I sometimes restored it, and even then, not always: at times there are reasons not to do so. For one thing, pending a check of good manuscripts, who's to say Ptolemy didn't write some other nominative? So the Atax R. appears as the Atagis R. and so forth.

In those chapters where I've followed Müller's edition, his Latin form and my English translation are both indexed here. Any variant readings given in his apparatus will be included only after that apparatus page is completely online.

The index sometimes lists a form not found on the page of text.
This happens about 2% of the time, in pages where I followed the Stevenson edition: almost always where I didn't dare fix what appear to be barbarous translations. In the index — where you need to find things — I've been less bashful. So the English text as I have it may give Monoeci harbor, but the index will have Monoeci Portus or maybe even Portus Monoeci; or Heroum city, but the index will have Heroöpolis. Use your common sense to supplement mine, occasionally in short supply. . . .

The index is not absolutely complete.
Right now for example, due to the way I drew it up, the index includes a number of duplicates; and often enough, different places by the same name have not yet been distinguished: where the index should read

• Sacrum Pr., Sacred Pr.: • in Corsica • in Hibernia • in Lusitania • in Lycia
it might for a while read:

• Sacrum Pr. • Sacrum Pr. • Sacrum Pr. • Sacrum Pr.
I realize that's not as helpful as it could be (although you'll notice that on that second line all four links are different); I'm slowly fixing these.

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