Tabula Peutingeriana (section) — top to bottom: Dalmatian coast, Adriatic Sea, southern Italy, Sicily, African Mediterranean coast

The Tabula Peutingeriana (Peutinger table) is an itinerarium showing the cursus publicus, the road network in the Roman Empire. An itinerarium (plural itineraria) was an Ancient Roman road map Cursus publicus was the courier service of the Roman Empire. It was created by Emperor Augustus to transport messages officials and tax revenues from one province The Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial The original map of which this is a unique copy was last revised in the fourth or early fifth century. ^[1] It covers Europe, parts of Asia (Persia, India) and North Africa. The Persian Empire was a series of Iranian empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland and beyond in Western Asia India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country North Africa or Northern Africa is the Northernmost Region of the African Continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan The map is named after Konrad Peutinger, a German 15-16th century humanist and antiquarian. Conrad peutingerjpg|200px|thumb|right|Painting from Maximilian Museum in Augsburg]] Conrad Peutinger ( October 14, 1465 &ndash December 28, 1547

The map was discovered in a library in Worms by Conrad Celtes, who was unable to publish his find before his death, and bequeathed the map in 1508 to Peutinger. Worms (voɐms is a City in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River Conrad Celtes (aka Conrad Celtis, Konrad Celtis; February 1, 1459 – February 4, 1508) was a German It is conserved at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Hofburg, Vienna. Hofburg Imperial Palace is a palace in Vienna, Austria, which has housed some of the most powerful people in Austrian history, including the Habsburg ^[2]

Map description

The Tabula Peutingeriana is the only known surviving map of the Roman cursus publicus; it was made by a monk in Colmar in the thirteenth century. Cursus publicus was the courier service of the Roman Empire. It was created by Emperor Augustus to transport messages officials and tax revenues from one province Colmar (Colmar kɔlmaʁ Alsatian: Colmer pronounced; Colmar between 1871-1918 and 1940-1945 also Kolmar) is a town and commune It is a parchment scroll, 0. A scroll is a roll of Papyrus, Parchment, or Paper which has been written drawn or painted upon for the purpose of transmitting information or using as 34 m high and 6. 75 m long, assembled from eleven sections, a medieval reproduction of the original scroll. It is a very schematic map: the land masses are distorted, especially in 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 Empire, Rome, Constantinople and Antioch, are represented with special iconic decoration. Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2 Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολις Konstantinoúpolis, or gr ἡ Πόλις hē Polis, Latin: la CONSTANTINOPOLIS Antioch on the Orontes (Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Δάφνῃ Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ Μεγάλη Antiochia ad Orontem also Besides the totality of the Empire, the map shows the Near East, India and the Ganges, Sri Lanka (Insula Taprobane), even an indication of China. In the west, the absence of the Iberian Peninsula indicates that a twelfth original section has been lost in the surviving copy. The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe, and includes modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra

The table appears to be based on "itineraries", or lists of destinations along Roman roads, as the distances between points along the routes are indicated. ^[3] Travellers would not have possessed anything so sophisticated as a map, but they needed to know what lay ahead of them on the road, and how far. The Peutinger table represents these roads as a series of roughly parallel lines along which destinations have been marked in order of travel. The shape of the parchment pages accounts for the conventional rectangular layout. However, a rough similarity to the coordinates of Ptolemy's earth-mapping gives some writers a hope that some terrestrial representation was intended by the unknown compilers. Claudius Ptolemaeus ( Greek: Klaúdios Ptolemaîos; after 83 &ndash ca

The stages and cities are represented by hundreds of functional place symbols, used with discrimination from the simplest icon of a building with two towers to 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,^[4] of which this is the sole testimony. Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus was a writer of the Later Roman Empire.

The fourth century tabula^[5] was the distant descendant of the one prepared under the direction of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, a friend of Augustus. Agrippa redirects here For other uses of the name see Agrippa (disambiguation. After Agrippa's death the map was engraved on marble and placed in the Porticus Vipsaniae, not far from the Ara Pacis. The Ara Pacis Augustae ( Latin, "Altar of Augustan Peace" commonly shortened to Ara Pacis) is an Altar to Peace

Publication

The map was copied for Ortelius and published shortly after his death in 1598. Abraham Ortelius ( Abraham Ortels) ( April 2, 1527 – June 28, 1598) was a Belgian Cartographer and A partial first edition was printed at Antwerp in 1591 (Fragmenta tabulæ antiquæ) by Johannes Moretus. ||-||-||-||} Antwerp ( Dutch:, French: Anvers) is a City and Municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Jan Moretus ( Johann Moerentorf) ( Antwerp, 2 May 1543 &ndash 1610) was a Flemish printer Moretus would print the full Tabula in December 1598, also at Antwerp.

The Peutinger family kept the map until 1714, when it was sold. It bounced between royal and elite families until it was purchased by Prince Eugene of Savoy for 100 ducats; upon his death in 1737 it was purchased for the Habsburg Imperial Court Library (Hofbibliothek) in Vienna, where it remains. This article refers to the Austrian Habsburg military leader for the stepson of Napoleon Bonaparte see Eugène de Beauharnais. The ducat (ˈdʌkət is a Gold coin that was used as a trade currency throughout Europe before World War I.

In 2007, the map was placed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, and in recognition of this, it was displayed to the public for a single day on November 26, 2007. UNESCO 's Memory of the World Programme is an international initiative launched in 1992 in order to guard against collective amnesia calling upon the preservation of the Events 43 BC - The Second Triumvirate alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus ("Octavian" later "Caesar Augustus" Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Because of its fragile condition, it is not ordinarily on display. ^[6]

Map

The Tabula Peutingeriana, from Iberia in the west, to India in the east.

Notes

References

• Annalina Levi and Mario Levi, Itineraria picta: Contributo allo studio della Tabula Peutingeriana (Rome:Bretschneider) 1967. Includes the best easily available reproduction of the Tabula Peuringeriana, at 2:3 scale

External links

• BBC article
• Roman Sites: complete scan of Tabula Peutingeriana 13th century
• Bibliotheca Augustana: complete scan of Tabula Peutingeriana 1887-1888
• Peutinger Map article by Lendering
• http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ancient%20Web%20Pages/120mono.html
• Tabula Peutingeriana (high-resolution JPEGs & Alphabetical index) at Sorin Olteanu's LTDM Project (soltdm.com)
• Tabula Peutingeriana: real-size reproduction with permission of the National Austrian Library