December 3, 2024
How Ancient Romans Traveled Without Maps

In an age when many people may onerous­ly make our technique to an unfa­mil­iar gro­cery retailer with­out depend­ing on a GPS nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem, we would possibly neatly gained­der how the Romans may estab­lish and sus­tain their mighty empire with­out such a lot as a prop­er map. That’s the ques­tion addressed through the His­to­ria Mil­i­tum video above, “How Did Historic Peo­ple Trav­el With­out Maps?” Or extra to the purpose, how did they trav­el with­out scaled maps — this is, ones “during which the map’s dis­tances have been professional­por­tion­al to their actu­al dimension in the true international,” like virtually all the ones we con­sult on our displays as of late?

The sur­viv­ing maps from the traditional Roman international generally tend to not take nice pains adher­ing to true geog­ra­phy. But because the Roman Empire enlarge­ed, lay­ing roads throughout 3 con­ti­nents, an increasing number of Romans engaged in long-dis­tance trav­el, and for probably the most phase appear to have arrived at their intend­ed des­ti­na­tions.

To take action, they used no longer maps in step with se however “itin­er­aries,” which tex­tu­al­ly listing­ed cities and towns alongside the best way and the dis­tance between them. By way of the fourth cen­tu­ry, “all major Roman roads together with 225 forestall­ping sta­tions have been com­piled in a document­u­ment known as the Itin­er­ar­i­um Antoni­ni, the Itin­er­ary of Emper­or Anto­nius Pius.”

This prime­ly prac­ti­cal document­u­ment comprises maximum­ly roads that “handed thru huge towns, which professional­vid­ed wager­ter facil­i­ties for hous­ing, store­ping, bathing, and oth­er trav­el­er wishes.” With this infor­ma­tion, “a trav­el­er may reproduction the spe­cif­ic dis­tances and sta­tions they want­ed to succeed in their des­ti­na­tion.” Nonetheless as of late, some sev­en­youngster cen­turies lat­er, “maximum peo­ple would­n’t use a paper scaled map for trav­el, however would as an alternative smash their jour­ney down into a listing of sub­method sta­tions, bus stops, and inter­sec­tions.” And for those who have been to try to dri­ve throughout Europe, mak­ing a mod­ern-day Roman Empire highway shuttle, you’d virtually cer­tain­ly depend at the dis­tances and issues of inter­est professional­vid­ed through the syn­the­sized voice learn­ing aloud from the huge Itin­er­ar­i­um Antoni­ni of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Map Display­ing How the Historic Romans Envi­sioned the International in 40 AD

The Greatest Ear­ly Map of the International Will get Assem­bled for the First Time: See the Massive, Detailed & Fan­tas­ti­cal International Map from 1587

Historic Maps that Modified the International: See International Maps from Historic Greece, Child­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic International

Down­load 131,000 His­toric Maps from the Massive David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and extensive­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the e book The State­much less Town: a Stroll thru Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *