More than 15 centuries after its fall, the Roman Empire continues to profoundly influence world history. This atlas traces the empire's rise and fall, looking at its provinces and cities, trade and economy, armies and frontier defenses; charting its transformation into a Christian theocracy; and assessing its lasting impact.

In the late eighteenth century, a new subject emerged that was one of the earliest forms of historical geography. It was called ancient geography or classical geography. Geographers, historians and classicists all contributed to its rise, as it flourished in both Britain and America. Yet in the 1920s, as geography took a different turn, the subject began to decline. As a result the story has been omitted from more recent histories of geography and...