VIKING

Published by the Penguin Graup Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

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First published 1995 Published simultaneously in Penguin Books

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Text copyright © Chris Scarre, 1995 The moral right of the author has been asserted

Design and maps copyright © Swanston Publishing Limited, 1995

AII rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above

no p~rt of this publication may be repraduced, stored in or intrad~ced into a retneval ~ystem, or tran~mitted, in any form or by any means (electranic,

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Bath Press, Avon

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0-670-86464-1í .01

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Foreword

Roman civilization is one of the great unifying factors in the history of Europe and the

Mediterranean. The extensive empire ruled by the Romans stretched from the sands of

the Sahara to the mouth of the Rhine, and from the Atlantic In the west to the

Euphrates in the east. It has left us its legacy in the form of Roman law, which still under­

lies many western-inspired legal systems, and in the Romance languages-French,

Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian-derived from Latin, which are still spoken

not only in former Roman territories but in countries of the New World as well as the

Old. Furthermore, Roman cities lie beneath many of our modern centres, and the state

religion of the late Roman world-Christianity-remains the dominant faith throughout

most of Europe today.

The Penguin Histoncal Atlas 01 Ancient Rome is an introduction to the Roman Empire based

on maps. The Romans themselves made maps of their empire, though little of these

have survived apart from the so-called Peutinger Table (a medieval copy) and fragments

su eh as the marble map of Rome. It is other sources, then, which have been used to com­

pile the present volume, and they are of broadly two kinds: historical and literary on the

one hand (what the Romans said about themselves), and archaeological and architectur-

al on the other

Each of these sources has its own particular role. The details of historical events them­

selves are known to us mainly through written texts in Latin or Greek. These include

works of famous historians such as Livy and Tactius, and social or official documents

such as letters and laws. Coins and inscriptions provide abundant further evidence, and

can often be dated precisely. Archaeology, on the other hand, can sorne times be tied

into the history but essentially tells us a different kind of story. We may remember the

Romans in terms of kings and consuIs, battles and emperors, but for the majority of

Roman inhabitants, those who ploughed the fields and tended the olive groves, by far

the best testimony comes from archaeological remains of ordinary houses, farms and

workshops. No one source of evidence, however, is intrinsically better then the others; it

is by using them together that we gain the fullest insight into the world of ancient Rome.

Chris Scarre,

Cambridge, 1995