Pomponius Melas Cosmographia, sive De situ orbis (Cosmography, or on the situations of the world) printed in 1482. This is the earliest surviving Latin work on geography. Pomponius Mela was a Roman geographer who lived during the 1st century CE. The main purpose of Melas Cosmographia was to describe the entire world as it was understood in the Roman Empire. The publications of Mela and Claudius Ptolemy were incentives for further exploration, and in particular, Melas descriptions of Africa were used by the Portuguese navigators who were venturing far out into the Atlantic for the first time.