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Note from the Editor of the Electronic version.
The maps of the Classical Atlas have been scanned at a sufficient resolution to enable easy reading, but they may not display at an appropriate scale, depending on screen size, resolution, and window size; we recommend you use software that allows zooming to view them.
The numbers of the maps given in the Index pages are the same as those in the list in the main body of the Atlas, allowing cross-reference.
Note that the Latitude and Longitude given in the Index pages are from Greenwich, while the maps, as common with many of the times, have grids with Longitudes given both from Greenwich and Ferro. If you use the latter you won’t find your target.
INTRODUCTION
THE accompanying Atlas has been included in this series for the
greater convenience of the reader of “Grote’s Greece” and other
works that ask a continual reference to maps of ancient and classical
geography. The disadvantage of having to turn perpetually from the
text of a volume to a map at its end, or a few pages away, is often
enough to prevent the effective use of the one in elucidating the
other. Despite some slight variations of spelling in the classical
place-names used by different authors, there need be no difficulty in
adapting the same Atlas to various works, whether they are English
versions of historians like Herodotus or Livy, or English histories
of the ancient world, such as Grote’s and Gibbon’s. Taking the case
of Grote, he preferred, as we know, the use of the “K” in Greek
names to the usual equivalent “C,” and he retained other special
forms of certain words. A comparative list of a few typical names
which appear both in the index to his “History of Greece” in this
series, and in the index to the present Atlas, will show that the
variation between the two is regular and, fairly uniform and easy to
remember:
By comparing in the same way the place-names in Gibbon’s and other
histories, the reader will need no glossarist in using the Atlas to
lighten their geographical allusions. It is not only when he comes
to actual wars, campaigns and sieges that he will find a working
chart of advantage. When he reads in Grote of the Ionic colonization
of Asia Minor, and wishes to relate the later view of its complex
process to the much simpler account given by Herodotus, he gains
equally by having a map of the region before him.
We realize how Grote himself worked over his topographical notes,
eking out his own observations with map, scale and compass, when we
read his preliminary survey of Greece, in the second volume of his
history. “Greece proper lies between the 36th and 40th parallels
of north latitude and between the 21st and 26th degrees of east
longitude. Its greatest length, from Mount Olympus to Cape Tænarus,
may be stated at 250 English miles; its greatest breadth, from the
western coast of Akarnania to Marathon in Attica, at 180 miles; and
the distance eastward from Ambrakia across Pindus to the Magnesian
mountain Homolê and the mouth of
the Peneius is about 120 miles. Altogether its area is somewhat less
than that of Portugal.” But as to the exact limits of Greece
proper, he points out that these limits seem not to have been very
precisely defined even among the Greeks themselves.
The chain called Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, ranging east
and west and commencing with the Ægean
Sea or the Gulf of Therma near the fortieth degree of north latitude,
Grote continues, “is prolonged under the name of Mount Lingon until
it touches the Adriatic at the Akrokeraunian promontory. The country
south of this chain comprehended all that in ancient times was
regarded as Greece or Hellas proper, but it also comprehended
something more. Hellas proper (or continuous Hellas, to use
the language of Skylax and Dikæarchus)
was understood to begin with the town and Gulf of Ambrakia : from
thence northward to the Akrokeraunian promontory lay the land called
by the Greeks Epirus — occupied by the Chaonians, Molossians, and
Thesprotians, who were termed Epirots and were not esteemed to belong
to the Hellenic aggregate.”
Beside this survey of Hellas proper or continuous Hellas, as Grote
presented it, he set the word-map of Italy that Gibbon draws —
Italy changing its face under the Roman civilization: “Before the
Roman conquest, the country which is now
called Lombardy was not considered as a part of Italy. It had
been occupied by a powerful colony of Gauls, who, settling
themselves along the banks of the Po, from Piedmont to
Romagna, carried their arms and diffused their name from
the Alps to the Apennine. The Ligurians dwelt on the
rocky coast, which now forms the republic of Genoa. Venice
was yet unborn; but the territories of that state, which lie to
the east of the Adige, were habited by the Venetians. The
middle part of the peninsula, that now composes the duchy
of Tuscany and the ecclesiastical state, was the ancient seat of
the Etruscans and Umbrians; to the former of whom Italy
was indebted for the first rudiments of a civilized life. The
Tiber rolled at the foot of the seven hills of Rome, and the
country of the Sabines, the Latins, and the Volsci, from that
river to the frontiers of Naples, was the theatre of her infant
victories. On that celebrated ground the first consuls deserved
triumphs, their successors adorned villas, and their posterity
have erected convents. Capua and Campania possessed the
immediate territory of Naples; the rest of the kingdom was
inhabited by many warlike nations, the Marsi, the Samnites,
the Apulians, and the Lucanians; and the sea-coasts had been
covered by the flourishing colonies of the Greeks. We may
remark, that when Augustus divided Italy into eleven regions,
the little province of Istria was annexed to that seat of Roman
sovereignty.”
As we see by this topical extract, Gibbon’s practice in the
use of Latin place-names is very much freer than Grote’s in
the use of the Greek. A few comparative instances from
the Atlas will suffice:
Among other works which the present Atlas will help to
illustrate, editions of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire,” and of Merivale’s Roman History which
leads up to it, are already in preparation; it is hoped to
publish in the series also an edition of Herodotus, the father
of the recorders of history and geography, who realized almost
as well as did Freeman the application of the two records, one
to another. The good service of the Classical Atlas, however
is not defined by any possible extension of Everyman’s
Library. The maps of Palestine in the time of our Lord
and under the older Jewish dispensation, of Africa and of
Egypt, and that, now newly added, of the Migrations of the
Barbarians, and the full index, give it the value of a gazetteer
in brief of the ancient world, well adapted to come into the
general use of schools where an inexpensive work of the kind
in compact form has long been needed.
The present Atlas has the advantage of being the result
of the successive labour of many hands. Its original author
was Dr. Samuel Butler, sometime head-master of Shrewsbury
school and afterwards Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. He
edited Aeschylus, and was in his way a famous geographer.
The work was at a later date twice revised, and its maps were
re-drawn, under the editorship of his son. It has now been
again revised and enlarged to suit the special needs of this
series.
LIST OF MAPS
- ORBIS VETERIBUS NOTUS
- BRITTANNIA
- HISPANIA
- GALLIA
- GERMANIA
- VINDELICIA, RHÆTIA, NORICUM, PANNONIA, ET
ILLYRICUM - ITALÆ PARS SEPTENTRIONALIS
- ITALÆ PARS MEDIA
- ITALÆ PARS MERIDIONALIS
- MACEDONIA, MŒSIA, THRACIA ET DACIA
- GRÆCIA EXTRA PELOPONNESUM
- PELOPONNESUS ET GRÆCIA MERIDIONALIS
- INSULÆ MARIS ÆGÆI
- ASIA MINOR
- ORIENS
- SYRIA, MESOPOTAMIA, ASSYRIA, ETC.
- PALESTINA, TEMPORIBUS JUDICUM ET REGUM
- PALESTINA, CHRISTI ET APOSTOLORUM EJUS TEMPORIBUS
- ARMENIA, COLCHIS, IBERIA, ALBANIA, ETC.
- AFRICA ANTIQUA
- AFRICA SEPTENTRIONALIS
- ÆGYPTUS
- ROMA ET VICINIA ROMA
- ATHENÆ ET SYRACUSÆ
- ORBIS HERODOTI
- ORBIS PTOLEMÆI
- MIGRATIONS OF THE BARBARIANS
