Product Description

In 99 full-color maps spread over 175 pages, the Barrington Atlas recreates 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 x 19 ins or 33 x 48 cm) has been custom-designed by the leading cartographic supplier MapQuest.com, Inc., and is unrivalled 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. This new initiative 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 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 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 all find it essential, although it is not just for them. It is also for students, travelers and lovers of fine cartography, as well as for anyone eager to retrace Alexander's eastward marches, to cross the Alps with Hannibal, to traverse the Eastern Mediterranean with St. Paul, or to 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

The Barrington Atlas includes a CD-ROM Map-by-Map Directory. A separate 1,500 page two-volume print edition of the Directory is also available at $150 / £95. 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.

The CD-ROM will work on any MAC or PC that supports Adobe Acrobat Reader, version 4.0. The installation software for Acrobat Reader is included on the CD-ROM.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #134525 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Publishers Weekly
Beautifully produced with an exquisite combination of scholarly precision and the highest level of cartographic art. . . . It probably will never be superceded.

Sean Coughlan, The Times Literary Supplement
This is mapping on an epic scale, with a team of 70 historians and archaeologists contributing . . . over two decades. . . .

Review
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 scholarship--and it probably will never be superseded.
(Publishers Weekly )

This is mapping on an epic scale, with a team of 70 historians and archaeologists contributing . . . over two decades . . .[Contributors] have added all the archaeological detail available--the lines of roads, the locations and names of settlements and towns, canals and aqueducts, mines and ports . . . showing what you might have seen as you rattled down the Appian Way in your state of the art chariot a couple of thousand years ago.
(Sean Coughlan The Times Literary Supplement )

This atlas is an indispensable tool for historians concerned with ancient times. But it is also a source of great pleasure for the amateur, the lover of literature.
(Los Angeles Times Book Review )

A magnificent achievement.
(Guy Halsall New Scientist )

A remarkable achievement . . . This unique resource is the most comprehensive atlas published on ancient Greece and Rome.
(Booklist )

The best geography of the ancient world ever achieved. With 99 maps on 175 pages, it reveals the world inhabited or reached by the Greeks and Romans from 1000 B.C. to A.D. 640 in thrilling detail, and a color code lets us track changes through 16 centuries. The collective learning poured into this project is almost intimidating to contemplate, and the fact that it could be completed testifies to extraordinary planning, dedication and courage . . . The cartography is luminous, the printing superb and the binding strong and supple . . .This magnificent book is likely to become a powerful engine of learning and discovery for many years.
(D.J.R. Bruckner New York Times Book Review )

The main point to make is that The Barrington Atlas is a major contribution to scholarship, extensive in scale, reliable and up to date, and so laid out as to be really helpful to the user.
(Jasper Griffin The New York Review of Books )

[An] essential tool for anyone interested in classical antiquity. . . it provides, for the first time in recent history, a single bound volume that maps the entire classical world. . . . Superbly edited, this has been called one of the greatest achievements in 20th century Greek and Roman scholarship; it's easy to see why.
(Library Journal )

Customer Reviews

A beautiful and comprehensive work of art
I waited a long time to get this Atlas ,after reading numerous books on Roman and Greek history I always found the maps were less than perfect and longed for a reference book like this one.
it took 10 years to put it together but the result is stunning , the maps scale is very good from 1/500.000 scale to 3 maps ( Athens Roma and Constatinople ) to 1/125.000.
It conatins 101 pages of maps covering from Britain to Afganhistan and India , including North Africa , europe and the middle East.
This is a unique reference book and I recommened it to serious readers od Classical history.
I feel there is no need to buy the expensice 2 book directory as the CD in the back conatins all the information for free.
Only if it was cheaper !

Barrington Atlas a must have tool
The Barrington is an essential companion to anyone reading Polybius, Livy , Appian, Strabo, Ammianus, Zosimus Procopius or Agathias. Indeed it adds greatly to the understanding of any ancient author whose work has geographical spread.
If I could wish for more it would be for more detail and for larger scale maps of some of the major cities. If the has a failing it is in the lack of overlap coverage which can lead to having to flip back and forth to maske sense of roads and physical freatures.

RB

Greco-Roman geography
Disclaimer: This is an expensive item. But if you are at all interested in the GrecoRoman era, this is a must-have. Not only is the academic research astouding, but - a really new thing - the maps are drawn with a precision which is well worth the price in itself.

If you have any interest in the classical period, get this atlas. Beg, borrow or steal, but get it.