Beside this survey of Hellas proper or continuous Hellas, as Grote presented it, he set the word-map of Italy that Gibbon draws—­Italy changing its face under the Roman civilization:  “Before the Roman conquest, the country which is now called Lombardy was not considered as a part of Italy.  It had been occupied by a powerful colony of Gauls, who, settling themselves along the banks of the Po, from Piedmont to Romagna, carried their arms and diffused their name from the Alps to the Apennine.  The Ligurians dwelt on the rocky coast, which now forms the republic of Genoa.  Venice was yet unborn; but the territories of that state, which lie to the east of the Adige, were habited by the Venetians.  The middle part of the peninsula, that now composes the duchy of Tuscany and the ecclesiastical state, was the ancient seat of the Etruscans and Umbrians; to the former of whom Italy was indebted for the first rudiments of a civilized life.  The Tiber rolled at the foot of the seven hills of Rome, and the country of the Sabines, the Latins, and the Volsci, from that river to the frontiers of Naples, was the theatre of her infant victories.  On that celebrated ground the first consuls deserved triumphs, their successors adorned villas, and their posterity have erected convents.  Capua and Campania possessed the immediate territory of Naples; the rest of the kingdom was inhabited by many warlike nations, the Marsi, the Samnites, the Apulians, and the Lucanians; and the sea-coasts had been covered by the flourishing colonies of the Greeks.  We may remark, that when Augustus divided Italy into eleven regions, the little province of Istria was annexed to that seat of Roman sovereignty.”

As we see by this topical extract, Gibbon’s practice in the use of Latin place-names is very much freer than Grote’s in the use of the Greek.  A few comparative instances from the Atlas will suffice: 

Gibbon’s spelling Classical Atlas Gibbon’s spelling Classical Atlas

Antioch Antiochia Naples Neapolis prius
Apennines Apenninus Parthenope
Dardenellcs Hellespontus Osrhoene Osroene
Ctesiphon Ctesipon Thrace Thracia
Egypt AEgyptus Ostia Ostia
Gau1 Gaula Cordova Corduba
Genoa Genua

Among other works which the present Atlas will help to illustrate, editions of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and of Merivale’s Roman History which leads up to it, are already in preparation; it is hoped to publish in the series also an edition of Herodotus, the father of the recorders of history and geography, who realized almost as well as did Freeman the application of the two records, one to another.  The good service of the Classical