Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World

The time period depicted is roughly from archaic Greek civilization (pre-550 BC) through Late Antiquity (640 AD).

The main (atlas) volume contains 102 color topographic maps, covering territory from the British Isles and the Azores and eastward to Afghanistan and western China.

According to the editor, the purpose of each map is to offer an up-to-date presentation of the important physical and covered features of the area, using all available literal, epigraphic, and archaeological data.

Some remote regions, where Greeks and Romans mostly explored and traded rather than settled (i.e. Baltic, Arabia, East Africa, India, Sri Lanka), are of the scale 1:5,000,000.

The atlas' production began in 1988 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and involved a team of 221 classicists and 22 map makers.

The largest individual contributor was Robert B. Strassler's family philanthropy The Barrington Foundation which supported the project with over $1 million and for which, in accordance with the donor's wishes, the atlas is named.

[5] An ongoing wiki-like on-line large scale collaboration for maintaining and diversifying the Barrington Atlas data-set is carried on by the Pleiades Project.

So, though the atlas claims to be "a reference work of permanent value",[8] a simple Acrobat Reader update will cripple its usability even for users who have the printed version of the map-by-map directory available, because the index shows only the main entries for each object.

[10] In November 2013, PUP released an iPad 2+ App version of the Atlas which retailed at a 95% discount from the hardcover edition making it more accessible to the average reader.