Peloponnesiaca

Peloponnesiaca Synopsis

William Martin Leake (1777–1860) was a British military officer and classical scholar specialising in reconstructing the topography of ancient cities. He was a founding member of the Royal Geographical Society and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815. First published in 1846, this volume was originally intended as a supplement to Leake's authoritative topographical survey of the Peloponnese, Travels in the Morea, also reissued in this series. The book is organised as a series of articles referencing historical sites, providing detailed descriptions of artefacts, sites and geographical features mentioned in Travels in the Morea, using information from the French Commission of Geography, Natural History and Archaeology which visited the area between 1829 and 1831. Leake was the first scholar to identify many ancient sites in the Peloponnese, and his precise observations led to his publications becoming authoritative for the classical archaeological sites of the region.