The Tabula Peutingeriana. an itinerarium or Roman road map, is the only Roman world map that survived from antiquity. It depicts the road rete di emittenti of the Roman Empire. The map survives sopra per unique copy, preserved at the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, made by a monk con Colmar, Alsace, in the thirteenth century, of per map that was last revised durante the fourth or early fifth century. That, mediante turn, was a descendent of the map prepared under the direction of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, per friend of Augustus. After Agrippa’s death the map was engraved on marble and placed con the Porticus Vipsaniae, not far from the Tavola liturgica Pacis Augustae con Rome.
The Tabula Peutingeriana « is verso parchment scroll , 0.34 m high and 6.75 m long, assembled from eleven sections, verso medieval reproduction of the original scroll. It is a very schematic map: the land masses are distorted, especially sopra the east-west direction. The map shows many Roman settlements, the roads connecting them, rivers, mountains, forests and seas. The distances between the settlements are also given. Three most important cities of the Roman Pigiare, Rome, Constantinople and Antioch, are represented with special iconic decoration. Besides the totality of the Riempire, the map shows the Near East, India and the Ganges, Sri Lanka (Insula Taprobane), even an indication of Pendenza. Per the west, the absence of the Iberian Peninsula indicates that a twelfth original section has been lost mediante the surviving copy.
It was copied for Ortelius and published shortly after his death con 1598
« The table appears onesto be based on « itineraries », or lists of destinations along Roman roads, as the distances between points along the routes are indicated. Travellers would not have possessed anything so sophisticated as verso map, but they needed onesto know what lay ahead of them on the road, and how far. The Peutinger table represents these roads as verso series of roughly parallel lines along which destinations have been marked mediante order of travel. The shape of the parchment pages accounts for the conventional rectangular layout. However, a rough similarity sicuro the coordinates of Ptolemy’s earth-mapping gives some writers verso hope that some terrestrial representation was intended by the unknown compilers.
« The stages and cities are represented by hundreds of functional place symbols, used with discrimination from the simplest icon of per building with two towers sicuro the elaborate individualized « portraits » of the three great cities. Annalina and Mario Levi, the Tabulas editors, conclude that the semi-schematic semi-pictorial symbols reproduce Roman cartographic conventions of the itineraria picta described by Vegetius, of which this is the astro testimony. »
The map is named after Konrad Peutinger, a German humanist and antiquarian, who inherited it from Konrad Birkel or Celtes, who claimed to have « found » it somewhere durante verso library mediante 1494. Moretus printed the full Tabula sopra ily until 1714, when it was sold. After that it passed between royal and elite families until it was purchased by Prince Eugene of Savoy for 100 ducats. Upon the prince’s death con 1737 the map was purchased for the Habsburg Imperial Court Library (Hofbibliothek) durante Vienna.
Per partial first edition was printed at Antwerp durante 1591 as Fragmenta tabul? antiqu? by Johannes Moretus
¦ Sopra preparing his 2010 book Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered, historian Richard Talbert collaborated with the team of the Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and with ISAW’s Digital Programs squadra at New York University, sicuro produce digital tools esatto record and analyze the map. These were published online, and could be accessed durante :