A map of ancient Pannonia and Illyria, roughly corresponding to modern day Slovenia, Croatia, southern Hungary, western Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro, originally published for the 1590 Parergon (Supplement) of Ortelius’ famous Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.
The map depicts the ancient kingdoms, tribes, and peoples of the region, as well as Greek settlements in Liburnia and Dalmatia, and the later Roman provinces and regiones of Noricum, Forum Julii, Pannonia Superior and Inferior, Germania Inferior, Dacia, and Moesia.
Despite listing the names of the subdivisions of Pannonia under Diocletian (Valeria and Secunda), the map does not feature his famous palace at Spalato (modern Split), with Salona taking precedence instead, probably because of its role as the original Roman capital of Dalmatia and birthplace of Diocletian.
In the waters of the Adriatic groups of sailing ships ply their trade, potentially a reference to the piracy for which the region was notorious before its subjection to Imperial rule. The map is further ornamented by three cartouches.
The Parergon (’Supplement’) was, as the title suggests, originally conceived of as a supplement to Ortelius’ Theatrum. The work, a massive and intricately researched index of the classical world, was accompanied by a series of ancient world maps. Unlike the maps of the Theatrum, the maps of the Parergon were researched and drawn by Ortelius himself. The work was a huge commercial success, and the maps themselves set the standard for ancient world maps for the duration of the seventeenth century.
Abraham Ortelius (1527 -1598) was a Flemish cartographer, cosmographer, geographer and publisher and a contemporary of Gerard Mercator, with whom he travelled through Italy and France. Although it is Mercator who first used the word "Atlas" as a name for a collection of maps, it is Ortelius who is remembered as the creator of the first modern atlas. Theatrum Orbis Terrarum was the first systematically collated set of maps by different map makers in a uniform format.
