Ancient Italy Map 1875 Plan of Ancient Rome Inset Print - Rome, Naples, Milan, Venice

Samuel Augustus Mitchell's Map of Ancient Italy was engraved by J. H. Young to illustrate Mitchell's Ancient Geography, with a Plan of Ancient Rome and a Vicinity of Ancient Rome as insets. The copy offered here comes from the 1875 printing of Mitchell's Ancient Atlas, Classical and Sacred, published by J. H. Butler & Co., though the map was entered in 1844. The catalog gives a scale of 1:4,600,000 and a size of 22 by 29 centimeters, and the engraving is hand colored, with relief shown in hachures. The prime meridians are Ferro and Washington, and the upper margin reads Classical Geography. The date 1844 in its original entry, made in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, shows that the map's design predates this printing by three decades.

The map shows ancient Italy and part of what is now Slovenia, with the regions color-coded and labeled with classical names. The two insets concentrate on Rome, one showing the ancient city itself and the other its vicinity, which reflects its prominence as the capital of the Roman world. Such sheets served as teaching tools in nineteenth-century American schools, where classical learning was a pillar of education. The classical names and the color coding make the map easy to read, and the inset plans give it a focus that few other maps of ancient Italy can match.

A teacher or student of Roman history, a family with roots in Rome or anywhere on the peninsula, or a collector of American educational atlases will find a fitting gift here. TheMapVault's Daggett sheet of 1835 and Kiepert sheet of 1903 show the same ancient Italy, whereas this Mitchell sheet adds plans of the city of Rome itself. 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.