One thing I’d wanted for a long time to help prepare my students to read authentic Latin was a good outline map of Rome that would give them a pedagogically useful way of thinking about the regions of ancient Italy.
It’s been a while since I drew map, but if I recall I based most of it on the full-color map found in Shepherd’s Historical Atlas.
And here’s a PDF of the Regions of Ancient Italy, which can be printed off for your students.
Of course it would be wrong-headed to think about these regions as anything like modern states, and any detailed study of a particular period would necessarily vary from what I’m presenting here, but I think the following is useful, and my students seem to have learned a bit about the regions. We’ll see how well it helps them as we move forward, and can think about various places mentioned in texts as falling within a much more quantifiable map.
When I teach the map I have students first pay attention to some major groups, namely Galli, Etrusci, Latini, Sabelli, et Graeci. Then I talk Roman expansion, have them mark the major areas, and fill-in the gaps.
And here’s your answer key:
Gratias ago tibi – utilissimus!
tibi et saepe et maximas gratias ago! (to steal Cicero)
Thank you for sharing this map. There is a similar map in Fabulae Romanae, p. ix, by Gilbert Lawall and David Perry (Longman, New York, 1993). This reader does a nice job articulating points of grammar for the intermediate student. And it integrates important topics from Roman history and culture at the same time. You do a wonderful job with your blog. Hope all is well for you.
Thanks for this map.
I would offer a correction for your key – those northern Galliae are Cispadane and Transpadane (Gallia Transalpina was more in the area of modern-day Provence in France) – the border is the Po River.