Title: The Atlas of Ancient and Classical Geography
Author: Samuel Butler
Editor: Ernest Rhys
Release date: November 21, 2005 [eBook #17124]
Most recently updated: December 13, 2020
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Mike Calder-Smith
Scanned, interpreted, and amended in the United Kingdom by Mike Calder-Smith.
Insofar as any copyright by any legal theory exists in this work by scanning,
interpretation, or addition, such rights are freely given into the Public Domain.
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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.
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 Ægean Ægæan Iasus Iassus Akanthus Acanthus Kabala Cabalia Akarnania Acarnania Nile Nilus Akesines Acesines Olympieion Olympieum Aktê Acte Oneium Œneum Chæroneia Chæronea Paliké Palica Dekeleia Decelea Pattala Patala Dyrrachium Dyrrhachium Peiræum Piræum Eetioneia Eetionea Phyle Phylæ Egypt Ægyptus Pisa Pisæ 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 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:
Gibbon's spelling Classical Atlas Gibbon's spelling Classical Atlas Antioch Antiochia Naples Neapolis prius Apennines Apenninus Parthenope Dardenellcs Hellespontus Osrhoene Osroene Ctesiphon Ctesipon Thrace Thracia Egypt Ægyptus Ostia Ostia Gau1 Gaula Cordova Corduba Genoa Genua
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.
