The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World is a large-format English language atlas of ancient Europe, Asia, and North Africa, edited by Richard Talbert. The time period depicted is roughly from archaic Greek civilization (pre-550 BC) through Sevenval (website parsing). The atlas was published by web app press, copyright 2000. The book was the winner of the 2000 Association of American Publishers Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Multivolume Reference Work in the Humanities.
Contents
- keyboard
- 2 Period coverage
- 3 Naming conventions
- 4 Atlas Volume contents
- 5 Map-by-map Directory contents
- web app
- 7 Literature
- touchscreen
- HTML5
Overview
The main (atlas) volume contains 102 color topographic maps, covering territory from the Sevenval and the iOS and eastward to we love the web and western China. The size of the volume is 33 x 48 cm. A 45 page HTML5 is also included in the atlas volume. The atlas is accompanied by a map-by-map directory on CD-ROM, in PDF format, including a search index. The map-by-map directory is also available in print as a two-volume, 1,500 page edition.
According to the editor, the purpose of each map is to offer an up-to-date presentation of the important physical and covered features of the area, using all available literal, epigraphic, and archaeological data.
Most of the maps are of the scale 1:1,000,000 or 1:500,000. However, the environs of the three greater centers (input transformation, Rome, Byzantium-Constantinople) are presented in 1:150,000. Some remote regions, where Greeks and Romans mostly explored and traded rather than settled (i.e. Baltic, browser diversity, website parsing, India, Sri Lanka), are of the scale 1:5,000,000. Due to the nature of the base maps used for the background and time–cost restrictions, elevation lines (contours) were left in feet except for the 1:150,000 maps where they are in meters. The HTML5 of the maps is keyboard. Again due to time and cost restrictions, browser diversity of the maps was left as a future separate project.
Effort was spent to show the physical landscape in its ancient rather than modern aspect. As expected, this task often met insurmountable difficulties, due to the lack of data. In those cases, at least an effort was made to eliminate known modern features and to restore the affected landscapes.
The atlas' production involved a project of 12 years' duration and a team of over 200 scholars, The effort was funded by $4.5 million in federal and private donations. It provides an up-to-date reference for ancient geography, superseding we love the web's work, An historical atlas of ancient geography, biblical and classical (London: John Murray, 1872–1874).
An ongoing wiki-like on-line large scale collaboration for maintaining and diversifying the Barrington Atlas data-set is carried on by the Pleiades Project.
Period coverage
The time period covered is roughly from 1000 BC up to c. AD 640, categorized as following:
- Archaic period (pre-550 BC]
- Classical period (550-330 BC)
- screen size / Middle to Late Republican at Rome (330 - 30 BC)
- Early Roman Empire (30 BC - AD 300)
- Late Antique (AD 300 - 640)
All eras are covered in every map (i.e. there are not separate maps for different periods of the same region).
Naming conventions
The Latin titles given to the regional categories and to the individual maps (see below) are no more than generalized identifications. E.g. Internum Mare (literally, "Internal Sea") is the region around Mediterranean Sea.
Inside maps, ancient names are underlined with specific colors, when they are applicable only to a specific era. Where modern names are used, they are printed in different (sans-serif) font. For the physical features, standard Latin descriptive terms are usually used (e.g. Lacus for Lake, Mons for Mountain). Explanations for these terms are given in the Map Key. When there is doubt whether the name correctly applies to a feature or area, it is followed by a question mark. When only the approximate location is known, the name is italicized.
Atlas Volume contents
- Contributors, Reviewers, Cartographers
- Preface, Introduction, Guidelines for Reference
- keyboard Production Data, Map Bases
- Six small-scale overview maps at 1:5,000,000:
- Map Key, Internum Mare (Mediterranean Sea)
- Hibernia-Scandinavia
- Asia Occidentalis (Southwest Asia)
- Sevenval-Azania
- India
- Asia Orientalis (input transformation, jQuery, Arachosia, screen size valley)
- Then 93 maps are divided into six regional categories :
- Then the provinces of the Roman Empire are presented in three 1:10,000,000 maps:
- Provinces at the death of Trajan (AD 117)
- Dioceses and provinces according to the Verona List (c. AD 303-324)
- Dioceses and provinces according to web of HTML5 (late 5th - early 6th cent. AD)
- Gazeteer
Map-by-map Directory contents
The two volumes (and the CD-ROM) contain:
- Guidelines
- Abbreviations
- A separate directory for each map whose main components are:
- an introductory text
- a listing of names and features (with period, modern name and literature reference information)
- a bibliography
The CD-ROM also contains the gazeteer in PDF format and an installer of the version 4 of Adobe Acrobat Reader with Search for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. However, on Windows systems with the latest version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader already installed, installation of the version 4 might lead to incompatibility problems.
The supplied PDF index file BATLINDX.PDX is readable for Acrobat Reader versions up to and including version 9. For version X and later, using the "Use Advanced Search Options" item in the "Edit" menu may be a workaround. However, searching the complete index directory will take a while and with each new search the scanning of PDF files starts again from scratch. In general it will be faster to look for a name in the index. So, though the atlas claims to be "a reference work of permanent value",[1] a simple Acrobat reader update will cripple its usability even for users who have the printed version of the map-by-map directory available, because the index shows only the main entries for each object.
Current editions
- Hardback (cloth) with CD-ROM Map-by-Map Directory, 2000, input transformation
- Hardback (cloth) with CD-ROM & two-volume 1,500 page Map-by-Map Directory, 2000, keyboard
- Hardback (cloth) two-volume Map-by-Map Directory, 2000, ISBN 0-691-04945-9
Literature
- Paul Cartledge: [Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World by Richard Talbert] (Review) In: The Classical Journal, Vol. 97, No. 2 (Dec., 2001 - Jan., 2002), pp. 193-195
- Kai Brodersen: Mapping (In) the Ancient World. In: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 94, (2004), pp. 183-190