The texts vary in length between about 200 and 12,000 words, and, as said, tend to grow in length with each new edition of the "Theatrum". Generally, the Parergon maps have longer texts than the "modern" ones, exemplifying Ortelius' close attachment to these reconstructed Roman maps, representing "the eye of history" as Ortelius explains on the Parergon title page. Languages used for the various editions of this atlas are Latin, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian and English. Even native speakers of these languages (excluding Latin, no longer spoken by anyone) have difficulty understanding their own language as it was written 400 years ago, due to irregular spelling, change of the meaning of words, archaic expressions, exotic fonts (including Gothic) and so on. Therefore, I have taken the English texts as far as they occur in the (only) English edition of 1606 as my starting point for providing translations into Modern English. With 166 maps, this edition covers a large part of the 228 maps which were used over the entire series of editions of Ortelius' atlas, which span the period between 1570 and 1624 (for some maps even to 1641). These texts have been modernised so as to make them accessible for anyone who understands present day English. For maps not occurring in the 1606 English edition, texts have been translated from other languages of other editions, usually Latin, French, German or Dutch, because of my greater familiarity with these languages as compared to Italian and Spanish. Ultimately, it is my intention to provide for each map a complete text history on this website, indicating which passages were added (and which were deleted) at which particular point in time over the period 1570-1624. Most texts presented on this web site do not (yet) show this history, but we thought it helpful to provide this intermediate information, rather than to wait with their publication until all text-histories of each of the 228 maps had been compiled in a definitive form, which may take another couple of years. In other words, these texts represent work in progress, and should be considered as such. I express the hope that others will become aware of the significance of maps texts which were introduced as a standard atlas feature by Ortelius, continued to be provided in atlases after Ortelius' example until about 1700, and then began to disappear from the back sides of atlas maps, giving way to specific text sections, no longer linked to maps.

On the whole, the contents of the map texts follow a regular pattern. First a discussion is presented on the various names of the area and its inhabitants, often providing linguistic data from classical and modern authors, mostly called "historiographers" by Ortelius. Then, there may be a short discussion on possible changes in the size and borders of the country or area under discussion, the characteristics of its most prominent cities, their products and salient features, the history of the inhabitants, their religion, and any miracles that may be connected to the area. Texts were written as 16th century tourist folders, extolling all the eminent characteristics of the region, which are invariably "goodly", that is, "excellent". Exceptions to this positive approach occur only rarely. An example is the text belonging to the map of Great Britain, which says: in Great Britain, it is always winter. Incidentally, this remark is also made about Germany.

However, Ortelius has a critical attitude towards his sources, which stands in contrast with the positive promotional attitude towards the region under discussion that we just mentioned. He may devote an inordinate amount of text to a discussion of differences between authors in their reports on the region. He warns which authors are unreliable and "of dubious credit", who "have been dreaming" and praises authors that he admires for their credibility (Strabo and Pliny in particular). Whenever he obtains first hand information about an area, he will mention the name of his source, often identifying this source as one of his personal friends or acquaintances. (For more information on Ortelius' text sources, see Brandmayer). Sometimes, he is wordy to the point of loquaciousness and circumlocution, to use Charles Dickens' term. Sometimes, when sources disagree, Ortelius takes sides and tells why, sometimes he professes his ignorance in the matter and leaves it to the reader himself, usually called student of geography, to choose what he likes best. As a true Renaissance humanist, Ortelius is fascinated by information from classical sources, but he maintains a critical attitude towards these sources, as appears from the following extract from the text on Ort 19, Angliae Regnum, paragraph 21-23:

"21. ... Cardane says That Historians and Writers of those times (between four hundred and five hundred years ago) were so delighted with fables and lies that they competed who could lie fastest and win the whetstone. It was, as you see, the fault of the time and age in which he lived, not the man.

22. The learned Orator Tully, in the second book of his Offices, as I remember, thus describes the virtues of the true Historiographer:

"Ne quid falsi scribere audeat; Ne quid veri non audeat; Ne quam in scribendo suspitionem gratiae; Ne quam simultatis ostendat". <that is:>

A good Historian may not dare to write anything that is false; He may not be afraid to write anything that is true; He must not show any partiality or favour in writing; He ought to be void of all affection and malice.

Learned Antiquaries follow this good advice of the grave philosopher. Sell us no more rubbish for pure metal. Refine what you read and write. Not every tale that is told is true. Some authors lack judgement, others honesty. Let no man be believed for being ancient.

23. For you know what Meander says: Ouk ai piches poiusin ai loukai phronein, "Grey hairs are not always a sign of wisdom and deep understanding."

Old men sometimes doze, and will lie as well as others. One says "Nescio quo casu illud evenit, ut falsa potius quam vera animum nostrum captant", <that is:> "I cannot tell how it comes to pass but it is surely true that we are more easily carried away by lies and fables than by truth". And how hard it is to remove an opinion, once it has settled however false and absurd, anyone with experience knows."

So far Ortelius on his bibliographical sources. One wonders how this attitude can be reconciled with Ortelius' predilection to report wonders. There is hardly any map text which does not contain the description of a miracle of one kind or another, often concluded by a remark of the sort: "if you believe one half of it, I will believe the other half". I think the answer to this question is mundane: in spite of the fact that Ortelius invariably addresses his reader as being "studious in geography", he knew that many of the readers and buyers of his atlas were not so much interested in geographical truth, but rather in exciting, exotic wonders and miracles. This phenomenon can be seen as early as the Nurnberg Chronicle of 1493, the world map of which features all kinds of weird humanoids with two heads etc., supposedly inhabiting exotic, distant and dangerous lands. Such information provided amusement and thrills. Readers in Ortelius' time were no different, and Ortelius knew it. His habitual inclusion of miracles in his map texts caters for this kind of reader (and buyer) of his atlas.

Whatever the case may be, the texts provide additional insights into the map under discussion as well as about the author of these texts, Ortelius himself.

The typography of the originals has been followed as closely as possible, taking the 1606 English edition typography as a model wherever I could. In some texts, the default font is italic, with proper names and place names in non-italic. But more often, typography is used in a reverse manner: proper names and place names are then in italic or capitals, the rest in non-italic. I have tried to retain the archaic flavour of the texts rather than attempting to modernise the texts to the extent that they truly read like having been written today. Where this led to texts which are difficult to understand, explanatory or additional words or word groups have been added between angled brackets <like this>. Gothic fonts have been represented in capitals whereas Greek lettering has been transcribed into Roman lettering accompanied by an indication that transcription from Greek has taked place. Arabic lettering has not been reproduced in any way due to both my ignorance of this language and to my inability to represent it on my computer, let alone on the web. Incidentally, in the English edition of the "Theatrum" there are mostly open spaces where Arabic should have appeared. This is probably due to the similar incapacity of the publisher of the English edition, John Norton (this in contrast to Plantin, producer of most "Theatrum" editions), to typeset Arabic. Where texts have retained Latin in the English (or other living language) editions, I try to provide translations into modern English. As indicated above, a text is opened by an edition identifyer between opening curly brackets and closed by that edition identifyer with closing curly brackets showing from which edition a text originates. Example: {1584{ text }1584} indicates that the text between the sets of curly brackets was introduced for the first time in the 1584 Latin edition.