MARCIANUS (c. A.D. 400)  , Greek geographer, was born at Heraclea in Pontus . Two of his works have been preserved in a more or less mutilated condition . In the first, the Periplus of the Outer Sea, in two books, in which he proposed to give a complete description of the coasts of the eastern and western oceans, his chief authority is Ptolemy; the distances from one point to another are given in stades, with the object of rendering the work easier for the ordinary student . In this he follows Protagoras, who, according to Photius (cod . 188), wrote a sketch of geography in six books . The work contains nothing that cannot be learned from Ptolemy, whom he follows in calling the promontory of the Novantae (Mull of Galloway) the most northern point of Britain . Improving on Ptolemy, he makes the island of Taprobane (Ceylon) twenty times as large as it is in reality . The second, the Periplus of the Inner Sea (the Mediterranean), is a meagre epitome of a similar work by Menippus of Pergamum, who lived during the times of Augustus and Tiberius . It contains a description of the southern coast of the Euxine from the Thracian Bosporus to the river Iris in Pontus . A few fragments remain of an epitome by Marcianus of the eleven books of the Geographumena of Artemidorus of Ephesi-s . See J . Hudson, Geographiae veteris scriptures graeci minores, vol. i .

(1698), with

Dodwell's dissertation; C . W . Muller, Geographici graeci minores, vol. i. pp. cxxix., 515–573; E . Miller, Periple de Marcien d'Heraclee (1839) ; S . F . G . Hoffmann, Marciani Periplus (1841); E . H . Bunbury, Hist. of Ancient Geography (1879), ii . 66o; A . Forbiger, Handbuch der alten Geographie, vol. i . (1842) .