AETHICUS (＝Ethicus) ISTER, “the philosopher of Istria,” the supposed but unknown author of a description of the world written in Greek. An abridgment, under the title of Cosmographia Ethici, written in barbarous Latin, and wrongly described as the work of St Jerome, probably belongs to the 7th century. After a discussion of the creation of the world and a description of the earth, an account of the wonderful journeys of Aethicus is given, with digressions on various subjects, such as Alexander the Great and the kings of Rome, full of obscure and fabulous details.
The name Aethicus is also attached to another geographical treatise probably dating from the 6th Century, a reproduction, with some unimportant additions, of the cosmography—little else than a dry list of names—of Julius Honorius.
Editions.—D’Avezac (1852); Pertz (1853); Wuttke (1854); Riese’s Geographi Latini Minores (1878); see also Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography.