Though the most fertile investigations were made by Greeks, Latin writers naturally influenced more directly medieval thought in the West. Of those who dealt with geographic matters in the strictly classical period Pliny the Elder (23–79 A. D.) and Seneca (3 B. C.-65 A. D.) were the most influential. The _Historia naturalis_ of Pliny, an ill-digested compilation of information of all sorts, contained books on geography that were destined to furnish the larger part of the lettered man’s geographical ideas during many centuries.[5] Pliny’s work was not merely extensively read but was used and plagiarized by other writers of possibly greater popularity. The most significant of these was Solinus,[6] a compiler of fables in the third century after Christ, whose _Collectanea rerum memorabilium_ consists almost entirely of borrowings from Pliny or from a book from which Pliny drew.[7] The geographical information in Isidore’s _Etymologiae_ is largely made up of quotations and paraphrases from Solinus. Seneca’s _Quaestiones naturales_[8] was also widely read and formed the source of the bulk of the meteorological lore of the Middle Ages. Two Latin writers of the late Empire also contributed materially to the evolution of geographical knowledge, Martianus Capella (fourth or fifth century) and Macrobius (fifth century). Capella’s encyclopedic _De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii_ is an elaborate commentary on and exposition of the seven arts; the book dealing with geometry gives the author an opportunity of presenting a résumé of geography, more particularly in its mathematical aspects.[9] That Martianus Capella’s treatise enjoyed an immense popularity in the medieval period is indicated by the quantity of manuscripts extant and by the frequency with which we find it listed in the medieval library catalogues[10] that have been preserved. The general sketch of the distribution of land and water on the surface of the globe contained in Macrobius’ commentary on the _Somnium Scipionis_[11] of Cicero was often quoted at later periods and formed the basis for some of the extremely crude maps of the world used in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. In the remainder of the present chapter a very general review will be given of the more important geographic ideas borrowed by the Western world in these centuries from Aristotle, Pliny, Solinus, Seneca, Martianus Capella, Macrobius, and some others, and an attempt will be made to indicate the relationship between the growth of these ideas and the broader evolution of ancient geography as a whole. _THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE_ ANCIENT COSMOGONY