The chain called Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, ranging east and west and commencing with the AEgean Sea or the Gulf of Therma near the fortieth degree of north latitude, Grote continues, "is prolonged under the name of Mount Lingon until it touches the Adriatic at the Akrokeraunian promontory. The country south of this chain comprehended all that in ancient times was regarded as Greece or Hellas proper, but it also comprehended something more. Hellas proper (or continuous Hellas, to use the language of Skylax and Dikaearchus) was understood to begin with the town and Gulf of Ambrakia : from thence northward to the Akrokeraunian promontory lay the land called by the Greeks Epirus-- occupied by the Chaonians, Molossians, and Thesprotians, who were termed Epirots and were not esteemed to belong to the Hellenic aggregate." Beside this survey of Hellas proper or continuous Hellas, as Grote presented it, he set the word-map of Italy that Gibbon draws--Italy changing its face under the Roman civilization: "Before the Roman conquest, the country which is now called Lombardy was not considered as a part of Italy. It had been occupied by a powerful colony of Gauls, who, settling themselves along the banks of the Po, from Piedmont to Romagna, carried their arms and diffused their name from the Alps to the Apennine. The Ligurians dwelt on the rocky coast, which now forms the republic of Genoa. Venice was yet unborn; but the territories of that state, which lie to the east of the Adige, were habited by the Venetians. The middle part of the peninsula, that now composes the duchy of Tuscany and the ecclesiastical state, was the ancient seat of the Etruscans and Umbrians; to the former of whom Italy was indebted for the first rudiments of a civilized life. The Tiber rolled at the foot of the seven hills of Rome, and the country of the Sabines, the Latins, and the Volsci, from that river to the frontiers of Naples, was the theatre of her infant victories. On that celebrated ground the first consuls deserved triumphs, their successors adorned villas, and their posterity have erected convents. Capua and Campania possessed the immediate territory of Naples; the rest of the kingdom was inhabited by many warlike nations, the Marsi, the Samnites, the Apulians, and the Lucanians; and the sea-coasts had been covered by the flourishing colonies of the Greeks. We may remark, that when Augustus divided Italy into eleven regions, the little province of Istria was annexed to that seat of Roman sovereignty." As we see by this topical extract, Gibbon's practice in the use of Latin place-names is very much freer than Grote's in the use of the Greek. A few comparative instances from the Atlas will suffice: Gibbon's spelling Classical Atlas Gibbon's spelling Classical Atlas