Rome did not carry on the Greek tradition of the study of geographical theory. H. F. Tozer, quoting J. Partsch, writes: “It has been aptly remarked that the task which Eratosthenes set himself of measuring the earth by means of the heavenly bodies, and that of Agrippa, who measured the Roman provinces by milestones, may be taken as typical of the genius of the two nationalities respectively.” Thus Pomponius Mela, purporting to survey the world in his _De Chorographia_ (written _c._ 50 A.D.), followed the coast and described various countries in passing, but by no means all, and added very little to geographical knowledge at large. Pliny the Elder (_c._ 23–79) devoted three books and part of another of his _Historia Naturalis_ to geography; but his geography may (at least in considerable part) be compared with the arid text-book of a generation ago, though in some instances his descriptions (as of features in Palestine, Syria, and Armenia) are valuable. As bearing on the quotation made above, it may be said here that the famous Roman system of road building gave rise to two classes of road-books (as they may be termed), one consisting of lists of stations and distances, such as the Antonine Itinerary (probably, in its original form, of the late third or fourth century), the other diagrammatic, such as the Peutinger Table (probably of the first half of the third century, though named after a scholar of the sixteenth), on which roads, stations, and other details were presented in a map-like form, but independently of true scale or direction. The Roman agrimensores were skilled surveyors.