Atlas of ancient & classical geography

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:

GROTE'S spelling CLASSICAL ATLAS GROTE'S SPELLING CLASSICAL ATLAS

Adrumetum Hadrumetum Hydra Hydrea AEgean AEgaean Iasus Iassus Akanthus Acanthus Kabala Cabalia Akarnania Acarnania Nile Nilus Akesines Acesines Olympieion Olympieum Akte Acte Oneium OEneum Chaeroneia Chaeronea Palike Palica Dekeleia Decelea Pattala Patala Dyrrachium Dyrrhachium Peiraeum Piraeum Eetioneia Eetionea Phyle Phylae Egypt AEgyptus Pisa Pisae Eresus Eressus Pylus Pylos Erytheia Erythia Thessaly Thessalia Helus Helos Thrace Thracia

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 Taenarus, 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 Homole 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 AEgean 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 Dikaearchus) 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."