Bagnall, 'Atlas of Classical History', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9501
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9501-bagnall-atlas

@@@@95.1.4, Grant, Atlas of Classical History

Michael Grant, <i>Atlas of Classical History</i>. Fifth
edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 7 pp. front
matter, 92 maps on 116 pp., 8 pp. index. $16.95. ISBN
0-19-521074-3.
	Reviewed by Roger S. Bagnall -- Columbia University
		bagnall@columbia.edu

     Once called <i>Ancient History Atlas</i>, then (at
least in the U.S.) <i>Atlas of Ancient History</i>, this
revision of a 1971 work has now rather confusingly adopted
for its fifth edition a title identical to that of the atlas
published in 1985 by Routledge under the editorship of
Richard Talbert. In any event, this aims to be, as the title
says clearly, an atlas of <i>history</i>. Anyone looking for
topography--the sort of thing one looks for in major atlases
and maps--will find nothing here aside from some rivers (no
basis for their inclusion or exclusion is visible; why the Axios
and Haliacmon are the only rivers shown on map 5,
Mycenaean Greece, for example, is obscure) and occasional
markings of hill-country relief rather reminiscent of the
playing boards of war games. (Nor is there any color. But this
is hardly to be expected in a clothbound book offered at
$16.95.)

     The maps provided range from the Near East in 1700
BC to the empire of Justinian as it stood in AD 565. The
novelties compared to the fourth edition are maps 72 and 73
(more detailed representations of the Rhine and Danube
frontiers), 86 (persecutions of the Christian church), and 88
and 90 (the empire in 395 and the eastern empire in 476--an
odd date to choose for the East). Some maps show broad
spans, others smaller areas (Rome, Athens, Pompeii, etc.).
Many are topical (products, migrations, populations, mints,
military and naval units, etc.). The range of material is
considerable; a map on the origins of Greek writers (map 37)
shows authors (as always, in boxes) tagged to their birthplaces
in order to provide "a corrective to the common view, based
on the glories of Athenian literature and art, that Athens was
the only Greek cultural centre that mattered." Never mind
that many--most--of these authors did most of their writing
somewhere else than their birthplaces.

     The previous edition of this atlas was discussed along
with eleven others in an excellent and detailed review article
by Clive Foss ("Classical Atlases," <i>CW</i> 80.5 [1987]
337-65). There is no need to rehearse Foss's analysis again
here in detail, for the relatively minor changes mentioned in
the preceding paragraph leave Foss's judgment still applicable:
"It would be hard to find one map which was altogether
dependable. . . . In all cases, the maps have been drastically
simplified to their detriment, and new errors have frequently
crept in. Basically, this atlas could be recommended because
of its price and range of maps, but its inaccuracies and
deficiencies are so pronounced that its value is greatly
reduced. Perhaps a student could get some basic information
from it; but he should use it with care" (362).

     The pertinent questions, certainly, are what kind of
history this book is meant to teach, whether it does it well,
and if it is the kind of history one might wish to teach or
learn. The maps are not for the most part intended to convey
very much geographical information (although there are
exceptions, like map 49, the roads of Roman Italy), but rather
nuggets of historical fact conveyed in little boxes. The book is
in fact a compendium of such "facts" displayed as tags on
maps rather than in some other format (running text, lists,
timeline, etc.). Overall, I fear, the approach reminds me of
nothing so much as my long-ago high school American
history class, in which factoids jostled one another in an
amiably egalitarian fashion, with the (supposed) inventor of
toilet paper next to the Compromise of 1850.

     It would not be hard to pick away at inconsistencies
and inaccuracies. Tone varies, too. On map 62 Bethlehem is
"Birth-place of Jesus," on map 85 "Honoured as the supposed
birthplace of Jesus Christ." Either Egypt as a whole or
Oxyrhynchus (I cannot tell which) is marked "Population may
have been 50% Christian by 300" (also map 85), an almost
certainly false claim in either event. "The Rise of Macedonia
under Philip II" (map 35) labels Stagira as "Birthplace of
Aristotle 384" (but does not tell us why this is relevant to
Philip). But this kind of enumeration is not very interesting
and endlessly expandable.

     It is more interesting to compare this work to the work
mentioned above edited by Richard Talbert from the work of
twenty-five contributors; of the atlases discussed by Foss, this
was the one most similar to Grant's in overall design. It also
came in for severe criticism from Foss, partly because of the
lack of color and relief (the maps are indeed hardly models of
graphic design, but they have much more relief than Grant's),
partly because of its devotion of about half the space to
textual material. Foss also pointed up the relative lack of
material pertinent to peoples other than the Greeks and
Romans. Foss notes, however, that it has far more (about 50
percent more) maps than Grant, with more than triple the
places (to judge from the gazetteer of the Routledge volume
vs. the index to Grant).

     In direct comparisons, Grant's maps are more boldly
drawn but lacking in detail. If, for example, we compare the
march of the 10,000 (Grant's map 33, Talbert's p. 58, by C. J.
Tuplin), we notice that Talbert includes rough representation
of relief (entirely lacking in Grant, as Foss notes), more than
dozen rivers and several lakes lacking in Grant, and more
than twice the place names: all at virtually the same scale
(1:10,000,000). Talbert's atlas has the accompanying prose
deplored by Foss and a bibliography, but the maps themselves
are blessedly devoid of "narrative." Routledge prices the
hardback version at $60.00, but the paperback at $18.50 is
reasonable. In a head-to-head matchup, the vastly greater
body of places included in Talbert's atlas seems to me the
decisive point, and I cannot see why anyone would prefer
Grant's volume to save just a dollar and a half.