The important Athens

Salt pans but no battlefields in a new atlas of the Classical world

PAUL MILLETT Richard J A Talbert et al editors BARRINGTON ATLAS OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN WORLD Map-by-map directory two volumes and CD-RON 1 .698pp Princeton University Press distributed ir the UK by Wiley £300 0691 03169 X

ndergraduates in their first week of I reading Classics at Cambridge are half-way through their opening lectures tures in Ancient History confronted with copies of a blank outline map of the Greek peninsula the major Aegean islands and the coast of Asia Minor They are then invited to try their hands at indicating on the map some of the major city-states named by the lecturer Past experiences have led in recent years to a preliminary labelling of land as opposed to sea and also a clear indication of which way up the map is to be placed The results are revealing Fewer than half those making the attempt are able successfully to locate Athens itself which has regularly been made to appear in Macedonia or modern Turkey After the completed maps have been passed to the front those attending the lecture have their attention drawn to a list of the standard readily available atlases of the ancient world Among those atlases must now be numbered the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World edited by Richard J A Talbert a lavish production which maps all classical lands from Britain to Asia How would a conscientious but cartographically ically challenged undergraduate fare in an attempt to locate the city of Athens using the Barrington Atlas The hundred or so maps at the heart of the atlas are followed by a gazetteer of place-