AWMC is excited to announce that The Geography of Pliny the Elder, the latest entry in the Maps for Texts series, is now available at this link: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/34c49dbd58984226aa213243f3787ff9/.
This map compiles and maps the geographic data in Pliny’s Natural History. The database, available here, includes some 6,500 unique entries, and this application maps all those entries that are locatable. Users can click on a feature or use the search function to find citations in Pliny and a link to a feature’s associated Pleiades entry, where further data, much of it beyond the scope of Pliny, can be found.
The map is displayed using ESRI’s free online viewer. The geography (terrain, coastlines, and river courses) are derived from tiles compiled by the Ancient World Mapping Center and currently hosted at the University of Iowa. These tiles represent scholarly consensus regarding the shape of the ancient world. Location data (i.e. geographic coordinates) are derived from Pleiades. The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University hosts an updated copy of the database along with other materials associated with Brian Turner and Richard Talbert’s translation of Pliny’s geographic books.
The application was developed by Grace Bell, Gabe Moss, Brian Turner, Richard J. A. Talbert, and the staff of the Ancient World Mapping Center. Special thanks to Tom Elliott, Henry Gruber, Ryan Horne, Phil McDaniel, and Gracie Riehm.