Atlas of Ancient Enigmas

Matching clear graphics with informative text, Christopher Scarre's atlas gives a fine overview of Roman history from the emergence of the first city-state in the eighth century B.C. to the rise of Christian theocracy a millennium later. The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome is especially helpful in showing the growth of the Roman empire through successive centuries of military campaigning from Scotland to Arabia and in delineating the networks of trade, transit, and communication that bound the far-flung outposts to the imperial capital. Scarre notes that many of those networks still survive in one form or another.