The maps were omitted from most or all subsequent editions of the Decline and Fall, including the standard 20th century editions by Bury and WomersleyĪ Heritage & P Geelan, Edward Gibbon’s Atlas of the World (1991) is a companion to the Folio Society edition of the Decline and Fall. (The vast majority of both appear somewhere in d’Anville’s corpus, the most relevant of which are below.) There is no explicit mention of the maps in the text, the Prefaces or the Advertisement. Although the maps were customized, numerous place names on the maps do not appear in the Decline and Fall text, and numerous place names in the text do not appear on the maps. The more elements in combination, the more important the place otherwise, their precise meaning is unclear the maps lack a key (“Notarum Explicatio”) nor were there generally accepted cartographic symbol conventions at the time usage varied by cartographer, publisher, and country. (Some of these tiny elements are difficult to differentiate even on original engravings of the maps under magnifier.) The names of modern capitals appear as points of reference, bold, italicized, underlined, and with an asterisk on a stem. Serving a comparable function, the cartographic place signs or symbols with settlement names are a basic circle plus –for select localities– various combinations of underlines, vertical strikes on either or both sides of the circle, boxes to the sides or top, and vertical stems atop. Boldface, block letters, initial caps, all caps, indicate ranks of political, ecclesiastic, or economic importance. Numerous places on the maps are designated with both ancient and 18th century names. The maps together with the 1781 text bridge the fall of the Western Empire and the rise of the Eastern Empire the text of Volume 2 begins with an extended description of Constantinople the corresponding map was inserted at page 22.

The smaller of the three maps is 8X10″ and was likewise labeled under the title “A Map of the Parts of Europe and Asia adjacent to Constantinople.” These maps were clearly customized for the Decline and Fall they do not appear in Kitchin’s General Atlas or World Atlas. There is considerable overlap in coverage. The larger ones, a matched pair, both measuring about 17X19″, were titled, respectively, “A Map of the Eastern Part of the Roman Empire” and “A Map of the Western Part of the Roman Empire.” Both were drawn by Thomas Kitchin (1718-1784) were dated January 1781 and carry the name of the Decline and Fall publisher, Strahan and Cadell. (California State Library, Sutro Library, San Francisco)īeginning with the fourth edition of Volume 1, published in 1781 along with the first edition of Volumes 2 and 3, the Decline and Fall included three original fold out maps.

Gibbons history of the decline and fall