1782 Delisle de Sales Map of Ancient Germany

This is a fine 1782 map of Ancient Germany by Jean- Baptiste-Claude Delisle de Sales. Centered on Bohemia, the map covers the lands of the Germanic people prior to the fall of the Roman Empire, from modern day Denmark to the Adriatic Sea and from France to Lithuania. Several important cities and towns are identified throughout, along with rivers, lakes and other topography. Mountains are beautifully rendered in profile.

At the time, 'Germania' was a name given to the lands between the Alps and the Baltic Sea. The region was inhabited mainly by Germanic, but also Celtic, Baltic, Scythian, proto-Slavic people. Caesar Augustus described the Germanic tribesmen north of the Roman Empire as extremely savage and a threat to Roman Gaul to be conquered. His Roman Legions, led by generals Germanicus and Tiberius, conquered Germania Magna to the River Elbe, and occupied it until the Romans were defeated at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, in 9AD. The Romans withdrew, establishing the Rhine and the Danube Rivers as Germanic boundary of the Roman Empire.

Tacitus wrote in Germania in 98 BC:

…they affirm Germania to be a recent word, lately bestowed. For those who first passed the Rhine and expulsed the Gauls, and are now named Tungrians, were then called Germani. And thus by degrees the name of a tribe prevailed, not that of the nation; so that by an appellation at first occasioned by fear and conquest, they afterwards chose to be distinguished, and assuming a name lately invented were universally called Germani .

This map was issued as part of Delisle de Sales' Histoire des Hommes. Partie de l'Histoire Moderne. This volume is exceedingly rare as most of Sales' work was burnt under the censorship of heresy.