Tabula Peutingeriana

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The Tabula Peutingeriana (Peutinger table) is an itinerarium showing the cursus publicus, the road network in the Roman Empire. The original map dates from the 4th century. It covers Europe, parts of Asia (India) and North-Africa. The map is named after Konrad Peutinger, a German 15-16th century humanist and antiquarian.

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. It is conserved at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Hofburg, Vienna.<ref>Its accession number is Codex 324.</ref>

1 Map description
2 Publication
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] Map description

Image:Part of Tabula Peutingeriana.jpg

The Tabula Peutingeriana is the sole surviving copy of the Roman cursus publicus; it was made by a monk in Colmar in the thirteenth century. It is a parchment scroll, 0.34 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. The most important cities of the Roman Empire, Rome, Constantinople and Antioch, are represented with a special iconic decoration. Besides the totality of the Empire, the map shows the Near East, India and the Ganges, Sri Lanka (Insula Trapobane), 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 Peutinger Table does not satisfy modern conceptions of a map: longitude, which can only be calculated with an accurate clock, is highly compressed in comparison with latitude. 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.<ref>Not all the stages are between towns: sometimes a crossroads marks the staging point.</ref> 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 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.

The fourth century tabula<ref>It shows the city of Constantinople, founded in 328, yet it still shows Pompeii, not rebuilt after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. Certain cities of Germania Inferior that were destroyed in the mid-fifth century provide a terminus ante quem.</ref> was the distant descendant of the one prepared under the direction of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, a friend of Augustus. After Agrippa's death the map was engraved on marble and placed in the Porticus Vipsaniae, not far from the Ara Pacis.

[edit] Publication

A partial first edition was printed at Antwerp in 1591 (Fragmenta tabulæ antiquæ) by Johannes Moretus. The full Tabula was printed in December 1598, also at Antwerp, by Jean Moret.

The original was acquired by Prince Eugene of Savoy and found its way into the Habsburg Imperial Court Library (Hofbibliothek) in Vienna, where it remains.