ORTELIUS, Ortell, or Oertel, Abraham, next to Mercator the greatest geographer of his age, was born at Antwerp in 1527, and died in the same city on June 28, 1598. He visited various parts of the Netherlands and Germany (1575), England and Ireland (1577), and Italy on several occasions. His Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (published at Antwerp in 1570, and reissued in a revised form five times during his lifetime) was the first modern atlas, Mercator having, it is said, delayed the appearance of his collection out of consideration for his friend. Most of the maps were admittedly reproductions, and no attempt was made to reconcile discrepancies of delineation or nomenclature. To the modern eye even England and Scotland appear with amusing distortions (the Mons Grampius, e.g., lies between the Forth and the Clyde); but, taken as a whole, the noble folio, with its well-nigh one hundred maps, and its careful accompaniment of text, was a monument of rare erudition and industry; and the author well deserved the appointment to be cosmographer to Philip II. bestowed upon him in 1575. A few years later he laid the basis of a critical treatment of ancient geography by his Synonymia geographica (Antwerp, 1578), reissued as Thesaurus geographicus in 1596. Other works from his pen are Itinerarium per nonnullas Galliae Belgicae partes, 1584 (reprinted in Hegenitius, Itin. Frisio-Holl.')∙, Deorum dearumque capita, 1573 (reprinted in Gronovius, Thes. Gr. Ant., vol. vii.).

See Macedo in Annales des Voyages, ii., and Gérard in Bull, de la soc. géogr. d ’ Anvers, 1880.