His short work ("De situ orbis libri III.") remained in use nearly to the year 1500. It occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, and is described by the "Encyclopædia Britannica" (1911) as "dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures." Except for the geographical parts of Pliny's "Historia naturalis" (where Mela is cited as an important authority), the "De situ orbis" is the only formal treatise on the subject in Classical Latin.