PROLOGUE I

Summary

First of all I exhort those who will read this book to peruse it with all attention and diligence, and not to run over it in a perfunctory manner, but with loving pains to study it and take into their minds impressions of the places, figures, and histories which it contains; and when the book has been read to the end, let them further look into the volume which we have composed for that lover of Christ, Constantinus: a volume wherein we have described more fully the whole earth, both the one beyond the ocean, and this one, and all its countries, together with the southern parts from Alexandria to the Southern Ocean, namely, the river Nile and the countries adjacent, and all the races of Egypt and Ethiopia; the Arabian Gulf besides, with the countries adjoining and their inhabitants as far as the same ocean, and likewise the middle country between the river and the gulf, with the cities, districts and tribes therein contained—a volume to prove that what things are said by us are true, and those false which are said by our adversaries, for whose sake this book and the drawings it contains have been prepared—those, I mean, concerning the size of the sun, and that sun-burnt, uninhabited part of the world about which they din our ears, and vomit out fictions and fables.