Expositio totius mundi et gentium

Expositio totius mundi et gentium ("A description of the world and its people") is a brief "commercial-geographical"[1] survey written by an anonymous citizen of the Roman Empire living during the reign of Constantius II. The Greek original, composed between AD 350 and 362,[2] is now lost. The text comes to us through two Latin translations made during the sixth century.

The work is composed of three parts. The first (§ 1-21) describes lands east of the Roman Empire and contains the most legendary and least accurate geographical information.[3] The second part (§ 22–62), the longest, describes the mainland provinces of the Empire,[4] while the third (§ 63–68) describes island provinces.[5]

  1. ^ or Handelsgeographie
  2. ^ Grüll, 2014 p.630. See also §.3: "Dominus orbis terrarum Constantius imperator"
  3. ^ Grüll, 2014, p.631
  4. ^ In order: Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor (without mention of the Black Sea), The Balkans, Italy, The Danube regions, Gaul, Spain and North Africa
  5. ^ East to west, from Cyprus to Britain