The First Punic War : a geo-spatial examination

This digital creative project, The First Punic War: A Geo-Spatial Examination, (http://bsumaps.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=2973cf2127be45a282 6813336692e5f0) presents an examination of the major battles of the First Punic War, fought from 264 B.C. to 241 B.C., as told by the historian Polybius who lived from 200 B.C. to 118 B.C. This, the longest war fought in the ancient Mediterranean world, began Rome’s march toward the conquest of the Mediterranean. The project is a deep map with a spatial narrative to interpret the course of the war by mapping the major battles of the war on land and sea. Improving on mere illustration, these deep maps allow for users to interact with primary sources and spatial coordinates. Three maps of the major battles of the war, culled from recent scholarship and created using the ArcGis Online software, are placed into historical context using the ESRI Story Map application to present the narrative. The maps and narrative highlight the importance of naval combat in the First Punic War. This project aims to use an interactive map to make accessible in a deep spatial context, the relative primary sources digitized through the Perseus Project at Tufts University. This project serves as a digital companion to Polybius’s history of the First Punic War, one of the most important but less studied wars in the Ancient World.Department of HistoryThesis (M.A.