France Map 1826 Ancient Gaul Classical Atlas Print - Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Geneva

Henry S. Tanner of 177 Chesnut Street, Philadelphia, published this Gallia Antiqua in 1826 in An Atlas of Ancient Geography, sixteen maps selected from the most approved works to illustrate the ancient authors, sacred and profane, and sorted into the groups Geographia Sacra, Ecclesiastica and Antiqua. Tanner, the Philadelphia mapmaker best known for his maps of the United States, engraved the sheet himself, with the districts outlined in color tint, relief in modified hachures and the Latin names set against three scales, and the meridian runs from the Fortunate Isles, the Canaries. It measures 29 by 23 centimeters at 1:5,200,000, and it appeared in 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of American independence, when Gaul was studied in American schools as the ground of Caesar's campaigns.

The map labels the lands around Gaul, with Britannia to the north, Hispania to the south and Gallia Cisalpina over the Alps, and it names tribes such as the Helvetii and the Sequani. The Helvetii lived in what is now Switzerland, and Caesar's defeat of them at Bibracte in 58 BC opened his conquest of the country. Lugdunum, today's Lyon, became the capital of the Three Gauls, while Massalia was the Greek colony on the southern coast. The Rhine, the Seine, the Loire and the Rhône are the river lines, and the Alps and the Pyrenees close the land to the east and south. The result is an American schoolbook picture of Roman Gaul.

A teacher of Latin, a student of Caesar, or a family with roots in Lyon, Geneva or the Rhine valley will find a scholarly gift here, perhaps for a graduation. TheMapVault's Wilkinson map of 1815 is the London original that American classical atlases drew upon, and its 1892 Roman Gaul comes from a French atlas with an inset of Lutèce, whereas this Tanner sheet is the Philadelphia edition, engraved in America and measured from the Canary meridian. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.