THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY.HISTORY IS, FIRST OF ALL, GEOGRAPHY! (Jules Michelet)                                    

                          Motto: Toponymy is not only a history deluxe, accessory science, as defined by our DEX, it is the 2nd best science after mathematics – (as historian Jules Michelet and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte opined).

 

Here’s a sensible reason why this science should become an educational discipline starting with just the middle school, and, as for the higher education, this discipline should be also introduced to the School of History (and l’histoire est avant tout géographie) not only the School of Geography, where it was, as Prof. Marin Giurăscu, who had worked there until half a century ago, confided, irrationally abolished, as the lack of knowledge in such domain of crucial importance has led to major errors, also in the academic environment. As for me, I joined the reasonable opinion of those two, scientific above all, figures.

Since my college days I began timidly to study the letters that Ovid had sent from his exile to Rome, to his best friends, Cotta Maximus Messalinus, who would then become his greatest enemy, to emperor Octavian Augustus, also as a good friend, and this I developed as a reaction to an answer that our Latin teacher Ghe. Gutzu of the Classic Mixed High School gave to a classmate’s question, “why don’t we translate from the exile letters, too?” (we had translated so far a little from the “Art of Loving” and “Metamorphoses”), and Gutzu answered: “he too much laments like a weak skirt”, I being convinced, based on what I had translated from Ovid, I stood before a great wise man and a true scientist, not some whimpering man, and this boosted me to read anew those epistles, the TRISTIA and PONTICA. (I had come equally closer to George Coşbuc, our national poet, both of them amounting subsequently to a good deal of my destiny: much later I would realize that both the Florentine Dante Alighieri was perfectly right when hierarching Ovid under Homer and the Hungarian scholar Ladislau Gáldi as regards George Coşbuc – under Dimitrie Cantemir, thus equalling the highly correct view of scientist and philosopher Mircea Vulcănescu, dead in the communist Aiud prison, regarding the national poet George Coşbuc as a quintessence of the Romanian nation, an idea that I joined straightforwardly.

Therefore, let us honour these two figures of the Romanian culture and science, and then fairly outline an undeniable truth: Ovid being the first great, elevated poet, who wrote a first booklet in the language spoken by our Geto-Dacian forefathers, as also stated by playwright Victor Eftimiu in a sonnet, the learning of Romanian language and literature should start with him, the Sulmonan.

Our poet Ovid is also the one who introduced the good  habit of specifying the place of dispatch and the date of a letter, elements that should be sacredly kept and, first of all o keep the text as such, especially when it is about toponymy; unfortunately, things were not that way: Teodor Naum, translator of Ovid’s “Tristia” and “Pontica”, who enjoyed and still enjoys the reputation of a good classicist, replaced, ad libitum, the toponyms, and those classical phylologians, instead of keeping to the Ovid’s text as such, they took over that of translator’s Naum, as falsified as it was. My crucial work was titled “References of Historical Geography in TRISTIA and PONTICA” (conceived as a doctoral thesis, half a century ago, However I, not being a party member, a conditio sine qua non, wasn’t entitled to file a doctoral thesis in my country). – Pages 162,163, and 165 in the book “Pages of memoirs”, “PACO” 2014, are a proof, by the Universities in MAINZ, POZNAN and STUTTGART.

Ovid, who had worked in the legal field for two years, knew very well the laws in force, which is why he attacked vehemently the emperor for his recklessness, who had exiled him under an imperial edict, skipping the first two stages.

Nec mea decreto damnasti facto senatus
Nec mea selecto judice iussa fuga est (Tr. I, 131-132)

(You neither sentenced me under a senatorial decree (as required by law)/ nor any courts ruled that I be exiled (so, the Senatorial Decree, according to under the Laws in force, had to be preceded by a court trial, the last step being the Imperial Edict).

And, on his way to the exile place, terra poenae, and exactly at the age of 50, floating on Adriatic first,  the ship reaches the Black Sea, when he clearly saw them double the city port of Tomis – present day Constantza, the only city known as TOMIS  at that time – he had with him the Strabo’s “Geographies”, as the most valuable baggage,  which had been published a few years before his exile, he saw well how the ship didn’t pull into port, but it took instead onto high seas, speeding up, Ovid cried rancorously:

Sarmatis est tellus quam mea vela petunt
Obligor ut tanquam laevi fera littora, Ponti
Quodque sit a patria tam fuga tarda querot;
Nescio quo videam positos ut in urbe Tomitae (Tr.I, 2, 81-84)

            (Sarmatia is the land that we are heading to/ I see well I’m bound to reach the wild shores of the western Pontus/ Further and further from my beloved country to go/ To see the land where the Tomitans are settled: what Tomitans?/ We left them behind long ago… What Tomitans?)

Another city with the name of TOMIS, beside nowadays Constantza, wasn’t known except by the local people and was also called JENIKALE, since it was on the seashore not far from such lighthouse, it’s about a small seaport regulating the navigation between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov (LACUS MAIOTIS).

Ovid did mention neither the etonym DACIAN nor the toponym DACIA, just those of GETA and GETIA, because HE, as a honest eye-witness, fully complied with the scientific truth, and according to every source worthy of consideration, the Getae and the Dacians were one nation, spoke the same language, completely different were however the lands each of them settled. The Getic empire stretched over the present day southern and eastern Russia all the way to the Persian border (the kingdom of Amazons), and the northern border of the Roman Empire was Lacus Maiotis (the Sea of Azov), a border extended only a few years before Ovid’s exile, as He poematised the description given by geographer Strabo (VII, 4, 4 and VII, 4, 5: Here are geographer Strabo’s statements in an accurate translation by Prof. Felicia Ştefi Vantz: “ A long time both Ponticapaeum and the other neighbour cities from the mouths of the Sea de Azov were governed by Leukon, Satyros, and Pairisades. They were called tyrants, although they were righteous, starting with Pairisades and Leukon. Pairisades was even nicknamed god. Pairisades too was called their last king who, unable to stand up to barbarians anymore, – as the toll had been increased, ceded his reign to Mitridate Eupatore, and from Mitridate it came under Roman rule. This kingdom included almost all of Europe and a part of Asia S., too. The mouth of Maeotic Lake – the Sea of Azov – is called the Cimmerian Bosporus; Strabo went so far, Ovid’s masterly poematised word follows

Haec est Ausonio sub jure novissima visque
Haeret in imperii margine terra tui

(This is the land/ where I, Ovid, am now/ the last one/ Just recently annexed to the Roman Empire/ Being its Northern border.

Following his repeated requests, his exile place was changed, more and more to the south, repeatedly. The first seems to have been in Pokutia, near the town of Isak, where the German scholar Laurentius Müller discovered, with the assistance of Woynovsky, a polyglot and head of the archaeological team who accompanied Müller in his documentation trip that took 15 years – revealing Ovid’s tomb pedestal to the German historian in 1580. On it there was the following epitaph, which could hardly be read, it being covered by weeds and sand – the archaeologists scraping it off for hours.

Hic situs est Vates quem divi Caesaris ira
Augusti Latio cedere iussit humo
Saepe miser voluit patriis occumbere terris
Sed frustra hunc illi fata dedere locum

(Here lies the Poet, whom Caesar Augustus’ ire/ Ordered him the native Latium to leave at once/ Poor him! how much he wished at home to die;/ A useless prayer: his rede wished him here to die). (Please note that Ovid’s urn wasn’t found under the said pedestal, and at Kiev, where the archaeologists went, hoping to clear things, they found nothing; from Volaterranus…?) I learned that, under Pope Julius II (1503-1513) his urn was transferred to Rome, by resorting to a scenario, as Ovid hadn’t died in Pokutia, but in the White City, his last place of exile, as witnessed by Dimitrie Cantemir and M. Kogalniceanu, plus the LACUS OVIDIUS,– featured by medieval maps – however not to offend the Papacy, which had anathematized him, Pope Julius II staged a setup to have the urn transferred to Rome… – it’s my opinion, and it seems to be warranted, since Julius II had put up for great deeds, including that Ovid “affair” – the famous Italian Renaissance was set off under the same pope; and Ovid’s urn was transferred to Rome and buried under Via Appia. (In fact, Pope Julius II, when he ascended to the papal throne, he stated, “aut Caesar, aut nihil!” – speaking of the great exploits accomplished by Caesar, CAIUS JULIUS, whose name he wore)

The Sulmonan’s first exile place, i.e., in the Ursa Constellation, couldn’t be elsewhere than at the northern end of the Roman Empire; because of the cold, the Getae wore wolf skins, and where, due to a harsh climate, there was a steppe vegetation, exactly how the Stagirites defines it: the “Getic desert” (χε τον Γητών ηρεμία).

There was a marshy region around the place where the Sulmonan lived, (they used to drink puddle water, hence the malaria frequency – even Ovid fell ill with that disease on two occasions) – it being in fact the only watering source, as there was no drinking water, like in Dobrudja, present day Constantza, a Romanised Greek colony providing all civilisating comfort: aqueducts, sewerage, a circus, a theatre…

The 2nd homonymous toponym TOMIS, i.e., Ovid’s Tomis at the Cimmerian Bosporus, as a seaport town was unravelled by Theophanes Confessor in his work CHRONOLOGIA C. De Boor, 1883, p. 14-28 and which was the 2nd exile place where he stayed most, at least six years according to P. IV, 10, 1-2.

“Justinian, after sending Theodora to Caesarea (to her parents, to get her protected, as he had been warned of an attempt), set off from Phanagoreia, fleeing secretly and arrived at Tomis, where he hired a 6-oar boat (Justinian was accompanied by two generals of his life guard) embarked and floated toward Assada, arrived at Symbolon, near Cherson (present day Crimea), from there floating toward Nekropola, they arrived at the mouths of the River Dnieper and River Dniester...)”, floating more and more to the south until they reached Varna, and so they rescued themselves,  (thereafter a coast region was also named Tomis (= παραθαλάσσιων χωριών) in the Taurical Chersonesus, present day Crimea, that had been called Tartarey before: we learned it from Nicephori Breviarium, De Boor, Leipzig, 1880, p. 15-27).

Of course, the Liverpool ovidiologist team, who published a result of their research in “Liverpool classical monthly” (a magazine started by John Pinsent, which survived about 20 years (1976–1995)) in February 1987. Even some classical philology heads of chair, as was the case of H. Hofmann of Gröningen University (The Netherlands) who, by having carefully investigated the climate and vegetation of the Dobrudjan area and seeing they do not match the detailed description given by the Sulmonan, in the mind of a honest eye-witness and with a strong responsibility toward Posterity – he never sacrificed a scientific truth on the altars of stylistics or prosody. (Messr. Liverpool Ovidiologists charge him with just such great sacrilege and this because they started from a preconceived idea, namely Ovid’s Tomis would be the toponym of present day CONSTANTZA; nothing more erroneous, as erroneous translations were adopted of the proper text, like in Romanian, where a wrong Tudor Naum’s translation was assimilated, especially as for toponyms and hydronyms, so, not OVID but TUDOR NAUM was considered instead.           Therefore, Messr. Professors OVIDIOLOGISTS from Liverpool drew a false, although logical conclusion, because they had started from a preconceived idea, namely present day Constantza = Ovid’s Tomis. [I, after having translated the Carolus Lundius’ book “Zamolxis primus Getarum legislator”, after having also deepened further into other works of Swedish scholars, among others, brothers Olaus and Johannis Magnus Gothus and, managing to get into their way of working, of doing research, I copied them to quite an extent: to commit to paper only what you see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears, to reject any political interferences in scientific research, as well as preconceived ideas. Unfortunately, the preconceived ideas don’t rarely have the first word in our country (this is also the case of the Liverpool Ovidiologists: they regard Constantza, without the right to appeal, as the Ovid’s Tomis; not rarely in our country, in a not too distant past and sometimes now, too, the politics and not the science has the last word: painfully true. Also when an idea  takes up that was ingrained that way, – and kindled by a public figure, as in this case, it proves very hard to unroot. That was the scholar E. Ovid Drimba who, from 1960 to 2001 published four editions, absolutely identical, on Sulmonan’s life and work – yet his Goodness isn’t a classical philologist at all!- so he is not the most guilty –  it keeps as such, sometimes for centuries, naturalizing the wise words of historian C.G. Giurăscu, “Cela prouve une fois de plus de quelle vie tenace peut jouir une fausse opinion lorsqu’ elle a été, initialement, formulée par une sommité scientifique ou par une grande personnalité”.

And, as the exegetes considered not Latin/ Ovid’s words, but those of translator Teodor Naum, – who falsified every single toponym and hydronym – the falsity took hold, and from us it spread to the whole world.

Yet another instance:

Frigora jam Zephyri minuunt annoque peracto
Longior antiquis visa Maiotis hiems

(Tr. III, 12, 1-2)

(The Zephyrs make the cold relent, Spring is here/ To me this winter at the Sea of Azov / Seemed anyway longer than those before).

Lacus Maiotis, which is the Sea of Azov, was translated Scythia by Naum, and those after him assimilated his erroneous translation, not the Ovid’s text, an unscientific, condemnable attitude for a classical philologist.

The other toponym TOMIS, Ovid’s Tomis wasn’t known except by the local people and called JENIKALE, too, for it lay on the seashore not far from such lighthouse, and its name came from the Greek noun tómos = piece and the verb τέμνο = to cut, for it was built on a small plot of land much later after Absyrtos had been slain by his sister Medea, according to the epic “Argonautica” by Apollonius of Rhodes. (And probably that small town has lain since long on the seabed, including the Poet’s belongings, among others the Ara pacis Augustae, a silver bas-relief after the golden bas-relief in the Museo delle Terme – for the region was haunted by natural disasters: floods and earthquakes.

Inde Tomis locus dictus hic quia fertur in illo
Membra soror fratris consecuisse sui

(Tr. III, 9, 33-34)  (all of the TRISTIA is committed to clear the correct name of this topos – TOMIS)

(That’s why this place was called Tomis, because a sister slew her brother there, i.e., cut to pieces (τόμοι).

(I think, if they resorted to aerial archaeology, they could find at least one of those two statues – one erected in the Sulmonan’s lifetime, or he had defended his foster fatherland as a young, brave soldier, although there, in exile he put on military clothes for the first time; another was erected after his death, at the city gate; also coins were minted with his face and Decrees issued, one under which he was exempted from paying the taxes – the only one in that land, and I, in at least 3 books of those dedicated to Ovid, published also the Decrees about which he , the Sulmonan speaks with so much pride, and modesty, too, starting with the Decree on granting citizenship; as for me, I have published several Inscriptions Decrees that can be attributed to Ovid, among others “Nadpisi Olbii” (1917–1965), Leningrad, Nauka, 1968 and IOSPE Vol. I, No. 355, p. 311-313) – the toponymy playing a great role.                Tr. II, counting almost 600 verses, was to Octavian Augustus, the emperor himself, with whom he had been on an absolutely friendly footing, which, among others, let know where it was,  in fact, the Tomis where he was an exiled, that important toponym at the northern border of the Roman Empire, a location known to his former good friend Cotta Maximus Messalinus, who would become thereafter his wicked foe to enter into possession of Ovid’s entire property; it is worth mentioning here that, it being about a small seaport, the name of which was, in fact, a nickname based on a true legend, known only to a few, to be fair, to Cotta for sure, according to hypocritical advice he gave to Octavian, who only knew the toponym TOMIS, assimilated to the later toponym Constantza. Therefore, the Liverpool (Great Britain) team of Ovidiologists, after having a lengthy research of the Dobrudjan area in terms of astronomy, climatology, flora, clothing, customs etc., finding nothing of those facts to match the claims of our erudite Poet, honest and fully aware of his work survival over millennia, and he often says it expressis verbis, have concluded – a logical, yet false conclusion, that Ovid had invented his exile, that he had been never exiled.

            I have an official copy of the conclusions drawn by the Liverpool Ovidiologists – that is Prof. Heinz Hoffman, head of chair Classical Philology at Grőningen University in The Netherlands, which was sent to me in Feb 1987 by Prof. Klaus Sallmann, the then head of chair Classical Philology (Seminar fűr Klassische Philologie) of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, which I enclose to that micro-study: LCM 12.2 (Feb., 1987), 23.

2. Hofmann, The Netherlands): “The unreality of Ovid’s Tomitan exile once again”, LCM 12.2 (Feb., 1987), 23:

Ovid never left Rome, he was never exiled. Prof. Hofmann of Grőningen University, The Netherlands, conveying in fact the official conclusion of the Ovidiologists, for they found nothing of what Ovid stated concerning the climate, flora… matches the conditions in Dobrudja.

These conclusions do support, in fact, the astronomy, geography, and climate facts pictured in the TRISTIA and PONTICS sent from the Cimmerian Bosporus, the Taurical Chersonesus (present day Crimea, Lacus Maeotis – the Sea of Azov, those toponyms and hydronyms, being areas in close proximity to his exile place – TOMIS, where he hung the longest time (P. IV, 10, 1-2) – at least six years.

Haec mihi Cimmerio bis tertia ducitur aestas,
Littore pellitos inter agenda Getas

This is the 6th summer since I’ve been here on the Cimmerian shore/ Among Getic warriors dressed in skins.)

The exile place would change at least two times: the first was in Pokutia, near the town of Isak, where there was also discovered the pedestal with the inscription quoted above (staged to be the last by Pope Julius II, in order to facilitate the urn moving to Rome).

The second exile place was near Odessa, where, under the wise empress Catherine II, preceded by archaeological diggings, the town of OVIDIOPOL was built, which was featured by every map until the mid-20th century.

Poet Alexander Pushkin, who was exiled there, too, would account about it – he dedicated to the Sulmonan a number of verses, out of which I chose a few, as an epitaph:

Ovid, I’m here now, near the calm shore where once thou brought the gods banished from their homeland, and where thou left thy ashes/ The lithe tinkling of thy lira made this region famous, they’ll keep talking about thee in this land a long time.”  (To Ovid, 1812).

(I translated the text from a German edition)

The last exile place was at the White City (Akkerman under the Turks, Belgorod Dnestrovskij under the Russians, and Moncastro under the Genovesans). Both Dimitrie Cantemir and Michael Kogalniceanu later, accounted how vivid a memory kept the local people of Ovid, passed through oral tradition. The Sulmonan died there, and in his memory they named a LACUS OVIDIUS, featured also on D. Cantemir’s historical maps; the fact that the pedestal of his tomb was found by Laurentius Müller, via the polyglot Woinovsany, in Pokutia, and Ovid’s urn was not under the pedestal, was a scenario tagged by Pope Julius II – out of compassion; we learned it from Volaterranus, in order to avoid a conflict with the Papacy, which anathematized Ovid because of his “Art of Love”, which wasn’t however a reason for his exile, and this opus had been “published” ten years before his exile.

The geography, climate, vegetation of Dobrudja as studied by the Liverpool Ovidiologists proved to have nothing in common with the northern region of the Roman Empire, where there was also that small city of Tomis, the legendary name of which was known, relating to the Legend of the Argonauts that had made so much fuss.

There, at the northern border of the Roman Empire, near Lacus Maiotis (the Sea of Azov, where the Northern Wind ruled (Boreas) and vegetation was so poor, and the local people dressed in thick skin clothes).

“Dum patet et Boreas et nix injecta sub Arcto
Tum liquet has gentes axe trementi premi
Pellibus et sutis arcent male frigora braccis.” (Tr. III, 10, 11-12; 19)

(As long as the Northern Wind and snow strengthen beyond the Ursa constellation/The flora too was very poor due to the dreadful cold).

“Poma negat regio…
Aspiceres nudos sine fronde sine arbore campos” (Tr. III, 10, 73-75)

There aren’t any fruit bearing trees in this land
Wherever you look, you see but bare fields, no trees.
We see these populations under the North Pole trembling…
With skin clothes they protect them against the dreadful cold

…so, it’s about southern Russia, by the Sea of Azov, where there was the northern border of the Roman Empire, as I already showed; I’ll give now an excerpt from the book “Südrußland im Altertum” by German Prof. Max Ebert (“Southern Russia in Ancient Times” published in Bonn and Leipzig in 1821, p. 12); verifying the correct location of the seaport town TOMIS – a toponym of great significance, both as a place of exile for the most erudite poet of the Augustan era and as a name – connected with the epic Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes. Here’s the quotation:

“Die Sucht, Südrußland als die eisstrarrende Heimat des Boreas darzustellen, ist nicht nur bei Poeten wie dem lamentierenden Ovid in Tomi, sondern auch bei guten und kritischen Beobachtern wie Hippokrates gewissenschaften Berichterschatern wie Strabo zu finden. Acht Monate sei dort Kälte und die übrigen vier Monate seien auch noch recht kühl erzählt Herodot” (IV, 28) “…Die Kälte Skythiens ist im ganzen Altertum ebenso sprichwőrtlich wie heute die sibirische.”  (The obsessive idea, idea that the southern Russia is the dominion of the icy northern wind is to be found not only in poets, like the case of Ovid at Tomis, but also identical in scientific observers in the critical sense, like for instance in Hippocrates or Strabo. “The cold would last for eight months, and those four months are also chilly”, Herodotus (IV, 28) underlines. The oxen horns, too, changed because of the harsh cold there. The Scythian frost was proverbial throughout the entire Antiquity) – as the Siberian frost is nowadays – so the location of Ovid’s Tomis is correct in southern Russia, equalling the borders of the Getic Empire.

Professor Ebert is of the view that the climate aspect – the flora, fauna, had the same characteristics in ancient times as in his time = the first quarter of the 19th century; in ancient times the forests used to grow richer than the animal kingdom.

The existence, in Constantza, of an Ovid’s statue made by sculptor Ettore Ferrari, has a history of a political nature –, as I learned from an older issue of ARLUS magazine – namely an Italian Romanian Russian pact relating to the second annexation of Bessarabia, in 1812; an island in Lake Siutghiol was named OVID during the Crimean War (1854-1856) by the surgeon General Camille Allard, who had his lazaretto in Constantza. In a micro-study on such subject I gave, to the readers thirsting for scientific truth, quotations from the books of this learned French, written after he returned to France at the end of the Crimean War. Both Lake Sjutgől and the island in it have been called OVID for the last 168 years only, the names having been given by Dr. Gen. Camille Allard, according to “Souvenirs d’Orient” p. 58-59, ne of the books he would write after returning to Paris, connected directly to toponyms like “Dobrudja”, Bulgaria…

Therefore, let’s pay due attention to this cult, accomplished poet of the Augustan era, and a honest observer of all surrounding reality, let’s translate his texts and not those of translator Teodor Naum, who falsified every single toponym and hydronym (where Ovid said Chersonesus Taurica, namely nowadays Crimea, Naum writes Pontus, where the Sulmonan wrote LACUS MAIOTIS, i.e., the Sea of Azov, Naum writes Scythia….)

Therefore, the Liverpool Ovidiologist academics were perfectly right to reach the conclusion that Ovid had been never exiled, they finding the Dobrudjan climate, flora, and fauna do not match the Sulmonan’s descriptions; the preconceived idea –Dobrudja as a location of that Tomis from the Cimmerian Bosporus, outlines once again that the present day city of Constantza has nothing in common with Ovid’s Tomis.

In fact, the conclusions the Liverpool Ovidiologists drew, namely he wasn’t exiled at all, that it all is pure fiction, come in support of my correct conclusions concerning Ovid’s Tomis, outlined as such by Prof. N. I. Barbu, too, in his review of my first work to the Sulmonan, “References of Historical Geography in Tristia and Pontica” more than three decades ago, outlining like the reviewer, too that what Ovid said as an eye-witness, honest and fully aware of his survival over millennia, are pure truths down to the smallest detail; please read the Review.

So the preconceived idea Constantza = Ovid’s Tomis didn’t bode well for the Liverpool Ovidiologists, but did support its real location: the southern Russia of nowadays, which equalled GETIA/ the GETIC EMPIRE in ancient times and LACUS MAIOTIS, i.e., the Sea of Azov had become its northern border a few years before Ovid’s arrival at Tomis, according to what Ovid correctly outlined, by only poetizing the words of geographer Strabo, explained within the boundaries of the science.

Here’s the starting point of the toponym errors, as outlined by Prof. N.I. Barbu:

“Underlying the obstacles that hindered a correct research of such a huge literary and scientific phenomenon, there was the indulgence that certain translators and editors afforded themselves, namely going far away from the source text, mystifying it”, underlines Prof. N.I. Barbu in his review of my main work  “References of historical geography in TRISTIA and Pontica”. Some Romanian exegetes, when facing real historical geography facts, they simply falsified the text, accusing Ovid of exaggerations/ poetic licences, instead of them having researched the essence of the matter; there, where there was LACUS MAIOTIS, i.e., the Sea of Azov, they set Scythia, where there was Taurica/ CHERSONESUS TAURICA = nowadays Crimea, they set the land of Pontus; in other contexts they skipped the toponyms, his way the falsity came to rule and from there it have gone worldwide or over half of a century, especially for the first exegete was a great figure, and I, who have researched and resolved correctly all the data, had to go into exile; he who had been charged with forwarding the command equalled the IMPERIAL EDICT.

That is why I pleaded and still plead for having the historical geography reintroduced as a first necessity curriculum subject, starting with secondary school.

[The Polish scientist SARNICIUS, who was also the Peter Raresh’s secretary, is worthy of getting listened to, likewise D. Cantemir and M. Kogălniceanu, but before all, OVID, who was my perfect teacher of historical geography.]

 

P.S. Almost a decade ago, on my and Prof. Marin Giurăscu’s proposal, there was established at UNESCO, Prof. Alexandru Mironov being secretary thereto – a historical geography circle, named “PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO” on my proposal; Prof. Alexandru Mironov being replaced thereafter, such circle disbanded. The hope was to get revived the historical geography and toponymy.

 

— Translated from Romanian by Honorius Crişan —