Macedonia Alexandri Magni Patria.

Title

Macedonia Alexandri Magni Patria.

Description

Map shows historical Greek Macedonia or Macedonia with compass rose and mileage indicator.

ca. 1730

Artist

Mortier (1661-1711)

Pieter Mortier (1661–1711) was an 18th-century mapmaker and engraver from the Northern Netherlands. Mortier had a partnership with Johannes Covens I (1697-1774) and founded the map publishing company Covens & Mortier (1721-1866). Mortier, being French himself, had easy access to French cartographers such as De L'Isle, Sanson, Jaillot, de Fer and De Wit. Consequently, much of Mortier's business was built upon leveraging the sophisticated Dutch printing establishment to issue embellished high quality editions of previously contemporary French maps. In the greater context of global cartography, this was a significant advantage as most Dutch map publishes had, at this point, fallen into the miasma of reprinting their own outdated works. By contrast, the cartographers of France were producing the most accurate and up to date charts anywhere. Mortier's cartographic work culminated in the magnificent nautical atlas, Le Neptune Francois. Upon Pierre's death in 1711 this business was inherited by his widow. In 1721 his son Cornelius Mortier took over the day to day operation of the firm. Cornelius partnered with his brother-in-law Jean Covens to form one of history's great cartographic partnerships - Covens and Mortier - which continued to publish maps and atlases until about 1866.

Historical Description

Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilisation, being the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, Western drama and the Olympic Games. From the eighth century B.C., the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as poleis (singular polis), which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Philip of Macedon united most of the Greek mainland in the fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great rapidly conquering much of the ancient world, from the eastern Mediterranean to India. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century B.C., becoming an integral part of the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire, which adopted the Greek language and culture. The Greek Orthodox Church, which emerged in the first century A.D., helped shape modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World. After falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, Greece emerged as a modern nation state in 1830 following a war of independence.