Old Map of Athens & Piraeus by Barbié du Bocage, 1785

Barbié du Bocage’s Old Map of Athens and Piraeus Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage prepared this map of Athens and its surrounding country in September 1785. Entitled Plan of the Environs of Athens, for the Travels of Anacharsis, it reconstructs the landscape of classical Athens and the route from the city to its harbours at Piraeus. Map Details Original English title: Plan of the Environs of Athens, for the Travels of Anacharsis Mapmaker: Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage Date on map: September 1785 Engraver: T. Cook English edition: London, 1793 Publisher: G.G. & J. Robinson Original map dimensions: Approximately 17 × 22 cm Approximate scale: 1:56,000 Area shown: Athens, Piraeus and the surrounding country Principal features: The Long Walls, Academy of Plato, Colonos, Mount Lycabettus, Mount Hymettus, Munychia, Phalerum and the harbours of Piraeus Distance scales: English miles, Olympian stadia and French toises Technique: Engraved map Relief: Hills and hachures **A Reconstruction of Classical Athens** Although the map was drawn in the late eighteenth century, Barbié du Bocage was not attempting to show the Athens of his own day. Its subject is the much earlier city of classical Greece. Ancient texts, surviving remains and contemporary scholarship were used to reconstruct the relationship between Athens, the surrounding countryside and the sea. That makes this map rather different from an ordinary town plan. It is as much a work of historical interpretation as it is a piece of cartography. **Athens and the Long Walls** Athens occupies the upper part of the map, enclosed within its ancient fortifications. From the city, two remarkable parallel walls stretch south-west towards the coast. These are the Long Walls, built during the fifth century BC to secure Athens’ connection with its ports. Their purpose was strategic. Even when the countryside of Attica was threatened, Athens could retain protected access to Piraeus, its fleet and maritime supplies. On the map the walls form a powerful visual link between the inland city and the sea. **Piraeus and the Harbours** Piraeus appears on its distinctive peninsula at the lower left. Its fortifications, roads and separate harbour areas are shown in considerable detail. Nearby are Munychia and Phalerum, together with roads leading back towards Athens. The arrangement makes clear why access to the coast mattered so greatly to ancient Athens. Its political and military strength depended not only upon the city itself, but upon the harbours through which people, trade and naval power could move. **The Academy of Plato** North-west of Athens, the Academy of Plato is shown within a wooded landscape. Plato established his philosophical school here during the fourth century BC, outside the city walls. The surrounding roads, groves and open countryside help place the Academy within its geographical setting rather than treating it simply as an isolated historical name. Colonos is also marked nearby, while Mount Lycabettus and Mount Hymettus rise to the east. These familiar landmarks give the modern viewer useful points of reference within a landscape reconstructed more than two centuries ago. **The Travels of Anacharsis the Younger** The map was made for Jean-Jacques Barthélemy’s Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece. The book used the fictional journey of a young Scythian traveller to introduce readers to the politics, philosophy, religion and daily life of ancient Greece. Barbié du Bocage supplied the geographical scholarship and maps needed to make that imagined journey understandable. The work became enormously popular in late eighteenth-century Europe, and its maps helped readers visualise places they knew mainly through classical literature. **A Map Designed to Be Read** Several details reveal the scholarly purpose behind the engraving. Three different distance scales appear along the lower edge: English miles, Olympian stadia and French toises. Roads, walls, settlements, temples and harbour features are all carefully differentiated. The hills are rendered pictorially and with engraved hachures, while the restrained colouring used in this reproduction helps separate important features without obscuring T. Cook’s fine engraved linework. More than two centuries after it was created, the map still succeeds in what Barbié du Bocage intended: it helps the viewer understand ancient Athens not as an isolated city, but as part of a wider landscape stretching from the Acropolis to Piraeus and the sea.