Onomasticon (Eusebius)
The Onomasticon compiled by Eusebius of Caesarea (more properly, On the Place-Names in the Holy Scripture, , Peri tōn topikōn onomatōn tōn en tē Theia Graphē, in Greek) is a directory of place names, or "gazetteer", a primary source that provides historical geographers with a contemporary knowledge of early 4th-century Palestine and Transjordan. It sits uneasily between the ancient genres of geography and lexicography, taking elements from both but serving as a member of neither. It is, according to many, the most important book for the study of Palestine in the Roman period. Background Eusebius' description of his own method, who wrote: "I shall collect the entries from the whole of the divinely inspired Scriptures, and I shall set them out grouped by their initial letters so that one may easily perceive what lies scattered throughout the text," implies that he had no similar type of book to work from; his work being entirely original, based only on the text of the Bible. Others have suggested that Eusebius had at his disposal early Roman maps of the Roman Empire with which to work, and which allowed him to record the precise distances between locations in Roman miles. Needless to say,