2021/08/13 by Olivier, Defaux
paper · doi:10.17171/4-9-4
Hellenistic scholars have been the first to link the geographical description of the known world with a mathematical investigation of the terrestrial sphere. The definition of mathematical concepts devoted to geography and cartography – meridians and parallels, geographical coordinates for example – enabled the development of a specific branch of geographical knowledge. Already in the second century CE, Ptolemy was able to produce maps based on the latitude and the longitude of localities. Compared to more traditional literary geography, mathematical geography did not arise a strong interest among scholars of the Roman and Byzantine periods. This has incited modern historians to impute a global disregard for mathematical sciences to the “Roman geography”.