Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (with Map-by-Map Directory on CD-ROM) [Hardcover]

Richard J.A. Talbert (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 069103169X | ISBN-13: 978-0691031699 | Publication Date: September 15, 2000

In 99 full-color maps spread over 175 pages, the Barrington Atlas re-creates the entire world of the Greeks and Romans from the British Isles to the Indian subcontinent and deep into North Africa. It spans the territory of more than 75 modern countries. Its large format (13 1/4 x 18 in. or 33.7 x 46.4 cm) has been custom-designed by the leading cartographic supplier, MapQuest.com, Inc., and is unrivaled for range, clarity, and detail. Over 70 experts, aided by an equal number of consultants, have worked from satellite-generated aeronautical charts to return the modern landscape to its ancient appearance, and to mark ancient names and features in accordance with the most up-to-date historical scholarship and archaeological discoveries. Chronologically, the Barrington Atlas spans archaic Greece to the Late Roman Empire, and no more than two standard scales (1:500,000 and 1:1,000,000) are used to represent most regions.

Since the 1870s, all attempts to map the classical world comprehensively have failed. The Barrington Atlas has finally achieved that elusive and challenging goal. It began in 1988 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, under the direction of the distinguished ancient historian Richard Talbert, and has been developed with approximately $4.5 million in funding support.

The resulting Barrington Atlas is a reference work of permanent value. It has an exceptionally broad appeal to everyone worldwide with an interest in the ancient Greeks and Romans, the lands they penetrated, and the peoples and cultures they encountered in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. Scholars and libraries should find it essential. It is also for students, travelers, lovers of fine cartography, and anyone eager to retrace Alexander's eastward marches, cross the Alps with Hannibal, traverse the Eastern Mediterranean with St. Paul, or ponder the roads, aqueducts, and defense works of the Roman Empire. For the new millennium the Barrington Atlas brings the ancient past back to life in an unforgettably vivid and inspiring way.

Map-by-Map Directory

A Map-by-Map Directory to the Barrington Atlas is available online (http://press.princeton.edu/B_ATLAS/B_ATLAS.PDF) and in a separate two-volume print edition of close to 1,500 pages. The Directory is designed to provide information about every place or feature in the Barrington Atlas. The section for each map comprises:

• a concise text drawing attention to special difficulties in mapping a region, such as extensive landscape change since antiquity, or uneven modern exploration.
• a listing of every name and feature on the map, with basic data about the period of occupation, the modern equivalents of ancient placenames, the modern country within which they are located, and brief references to relevant ancient testimony or modern studies.
• a bibliography of works cited.

The Map-by-Map Directory is an essential accompaniment to the Barrington Atlas. As a uniquely rich, comprehensive, up-to-date distillation of evidence and scholarship, it has no match elsewhere and opens the way to an immense variety of further research initiatives

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beautifully produced with an exquisite combination of scholarly precision and the highest level of cartographic art, this atlas is one of the greatest achievements in 20th-century Greek and Roman scholarshipDand it probably will never be superceded. It contains 99 strikingly clear and precise color maps reflecting Greek or Roman presence in the ancient world and presenting the landscape, insofar as possible, as it was in those times. The maps provide locations for the sites of thousands of known cities as well as indicators of less securely attested areas of habitation from the ninth-century B.C. to the fifth century A.D. The accuracy of these maps has been made possible by developments in satellite-generated aeronautical charts and recent progress in computational power. The atlas's final production began in 1988; its completion involved over 160 scholars and cartographers (editor Talbert is a professor of history and classics at UNC-Chapel Hill). Readers can choose between a CD-ROM and a print version of the accompanying two-volume map-by-map directory that contains essential information about the sites and their topography. A gazetteer includes the names of and critical information about all the sites located in the maps, and the accompanying Adobe Acrobat Reader provides powerful search capabilities. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The result of more than 10 years of intensive effort, this folio-sized atlas is a remarkable achievement of scholarship involving more than 197 historians, archaeologists, assistants, and cartographers from around the world. The creators started with modern aeronautical maps of the regions made by the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency and the British Directorate General of Military Survey. Scholars then spent years making necessary geographical changes and locating sites.The 99 full-color maps re-create the entire world of the Greeks and Romans from the British Isles to North Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The chronological span ranges from archaic Greece^B through the late Roman Empire, roughly 1000 B.C. to A.D. 640. Six small-scale overview maps are followed by maps arranged in six regional sections and then by three outline maps showing the Roman Empire's provinces in A.D. 117.The majority of the maps are double-spread pages that face the reader. The hand-sewn binding means that pages lie flat. For 18 of the maps, the user must rotate the book to read, and one map, depicting the Mediterranean region, is a three-page foldout. The table of contents and locator diagrams inside the front and back covers help in finding the appropriate map, although some users may be daunted by the use of ancient, generally Latin names (Aegyp tus, Internum Mare, Latium Vetus ) for map headings, place names, and features. No more than two map scales (1:1,000,000 and 1:500,000) are used for most regions. All maps show geographical features such as contours, elevations, mountains, forests, swamps, and so on. Cultural features like aqueducts, roads, tunnels, and urban areas are also depicted, as are points such as dams, estates, lighthouses, monasteries, temples, and wells. There are no city plans, although the relative importance of cities is indicated by type style. Color is used to denote time periods and elevations. A detailed Map Key explains the various symbols and conventions.Assisting users of the atlas is a gazetteer and a CD-ROM "Map-by-Map Directory." The 43-page gazetteer has five columns per page and approximately 24,000 entries. Each entry provides the name, modern country location, map page, and grid square/letter location. The CD-ROM that accompanies the atlas is readable using Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 and is easy to navigate. A typical CD-ROM entry gives a history of the making of a particular map, followed by a listing of every entry for that map. This listing provides grid location, place and feature name, time period, modern name or country location, references from classical and modern documentation, and a bibliography. A two-volume print edition of the "Map-by-Map Directory" is also available for an additional $125 ($150 if purchased separately).This unique resource is the most comprehensive atlas published on ancient Greece and Rome. Large public libraries as well as universities with map collections and programs in history and classical studies will want to seriously consider acquiring this marvelous atlas. REVWR
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (September 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 069103169X
• ISBN-13: 978-0691031699
• Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 16.9 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,262,146 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 98 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All the geographical detail of the Greek and Roman world, November 22, 2000

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (with Map-by-Map Directory on CD-ROM) (Hardcover)

Finally, after years in the making, this atlas is finished and I'm glad to have it.

This is a great work, all the detailed knowledge about location of cities, shrines, roads, etc, etc., etc., that has been gathered about Roman and Greek sites has been put together in just one atlas. Even individual estates are placed on maps, when convenient.

Seamlessly, from one map to another you can trace any route, find any name, and look into the neighboring area.

The map by map directory provides further insight into the sources of information, variant ancient names and modern place names (if any),

Obviously there's no such a thing as a telescope/microscope. You have to know what you are looking for, because details can sometimes shield the big picture. You need to know the original spelling of a name, or some variant. This book is invaluable when looking for names and places that are nowhere else printed in a map, at least a map that covers an area that places them in context.

Now, what else could be useful?

Basically, I would have liked three things:

- an 'inverse' gazetteer or 'name dictionary'. Look for modern place names and find ancient equivalents.

To look for a modern name is difficult. The book is not intended for this. You have to use the search engine in Acrobat, which means that you have to be using a computer. And scroll though the results. There is no straightforward way. So, a 'Modern Names Gazetteer' with ancient equivalents is something I'd like to have. Could a database fulfill this purpose? PDF formats do not allow data management, but the editor must have the data. Someone will provide this.

- a different altitude color-coded scale

As for the altitude color-coded tints, to my taste, there is at least a brown shade too many. The tinted scale is such, that some maps look a little brownish, because everything above 1000 feet has that background color. Of course, there are contour lines, but you have to look at them and read the numbers. Coding is not very useful in such a situation. Printed names over brown background are not easily readable.

- a heavy paper o plastic loose-leaf with the Map Key

The Map Key appears only on map 1, on the reverse side of the page, a good idea since the maps are not clogged with repetitive information and space is used for the essential purpose. But then you have to return to it for a reference. Thence, either it will wear out or hopefully you will remember usual references. Not for the casual reader. I've already photocopied it.

Overall, an outstanding achievement. Four stars, could have been five if some of the above items had been included.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Once in a lifetime atlas of the Classical world, August 26, 2001

By 

David Clapp "David" (TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (with Map-by-Map Directory on CD-ROM) (Hardcover)

There has never been an atlas of the ancient world to compare with this incredible piece of scholarship and mapmaking. At a cost of about five million dollars and over a decade in development, it contains highly detailed professional maps equivalent to the best atlases of our modern world. It goes beyond the Mediterranean world to include europe as far as Britain and the east as far India. The last atlas of this time period I purchased had a few dozen imprecise and limited small maps. There are 99 full-color large-scale maps in this volume. I haven't been this excited about a reference book for several years.

15 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Faulty geography and a peace of sloppy work!, January 3, 2010

By 

Nicht Eindimensional "selber denken" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (with Map-by-Map Directory on CD-ROM) (Hardcover)

I bought this Atlas and cross checked its geography with common known things in the geography of Switzerland. Its geography is a mixture of modern and ancient items. The maps resemble nigher the ancient geography nor the modern one. E.g.:
- The Sihl-lake is maped: But it is a modern dammed lake build in the 1930ies.
- The Wägitaler-lake is maped: But it is a moder dammed lake finished 1924.
- The course of the river Linth is the going to the Walensee, thus showing its path after the Linth river control (1807-23).
- The ~1550 with rubble of the Linth filled up lake of Tuggen is missing.
- The Aare is shown before the correction of the Jura waters (1868-78) but:
- The River Kander is shown in its modern path of 1714 after the correction of the Kander flowing into the lake of Thun.
- The Lac de la Gruyère is present while being dammed 1944-48.
- The path of the roman road over the Kunkels bypass is missing.
- The place CCAA (modern Cologne, Germany) is placed westwards of is real position.

This are things that show that the authors of this atlas never took any look into a swiss map or secondary-level schoolbook. This is for the area i can judge, so I do have to suppose the rest isn't better either.