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A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

752 points| curtis | 8 years ago |sashat.me

101 comments

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[+] kybernetikos|8 years ago|reply
Tabula Peutingeriana is a road map of Europe which is a copy of a Roman original thought to have been based on a map prepared by Agrippa.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/TabulaPe...

It also has a 'subway' feel, given that not much attention has been paid to getting the shapes correct.

[+] cannam|8 years ago|reply
Any idea what the small circular lake with the island in the middle, at bottom right might be? That's an interestingly precise shape.

(It's surrounded by labels for desert, but I can't make out the labels on the island itself.)

[+] edward_rolf|8 years ago|reply
That map is just awsome in so many ways. Where is Denmark and Sweden though? Romans just didn't think there was anything up there? Nothing? Way too cold up there for people to live?
[+] arethuza|8 years ago|reply
I love the Wall there on Britannia...

"There is no land beyond us and even the sea is no safe refuge when we are threatened by the Roman fleet....We are the last people on earth, and the last to be free: our very remoteness in a land known only to rumour has protected us up till this day...."

[+] singularity2001|8 years ago|reply
"the Greenbelt" amplifying the fact that civilization used to spread more in east-west direction then North-South
[+] rurban|8 years ago|reply
I find it interesting they put Albania into Persia, not between Dalmatia and Macedonia/Lepirum Novum.
[+] IngoBlechschmid|8 years ago|reply
Dear Sasha,

this is brilliant. I know the perfect person to give your map as a present and will buy the high-quality PDF no matter what. But let's try an experiment!

Can you name a price for setting the map free? By which I mean, releasing it and all source materials under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license of your choosing?

If so, then, dear Internet, let's crowdfund at https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/... (just based on the honor system, from both sides). If you love Sasha's subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads as much as I do, then consider pledging a certain amount at that Etherpad for setting the map free.

Cheers, Ingo

Update: Sasha replied to a private mail of mine in a very kind way. He won't set the map free right now. Please still consider supporting him if you like his work. :-)

[+] davidw|8 years ago|reply
Selling copies to people who want it is more efficient than the crowdfunding approach: the people get their maps right away, and the author gets money right away. There's less friction in this approach.

Of course, we don't get the source code, which is a loss to some people, but all that extra "friction" involved in the crowdfunding path is why simply selling stuff directly is an easier way to make money. It also requires less guesswork on the part of the author as to how much they may be able to extract from the work, in total.

[+] johan_larson|8 years ago|reply
It's strange there are so many coastal routes. Shipping virtually anything by sea has been cheaper than moving it over land for a long time, and that probably includes troops. I would have expected roads to connect coastal settlements inland, not along the coast.
[+] _Codemonkeyism|8 years ago|reply
Very happily my hometown of Cambodunum is there, feeling strangishly proud. Sadly in 125AD we we're no longer a capital of Raetia, lost that to Augusta Vindelicorum.
[+] ponyous|8 years ago|reply
I feel strangely proud as well. My city never appears on HN, but Poetovio appears on here and it has only 20K people nowadays. In the Roman times, it had an estimated 40k population and it was a military camp IIRC.
[+] bhaak|8 years ago|reply
My hometown of Curia is there as well.

Although, doesn't make me especially proud, it has been an uninterrupted population history that starts way before the Romans. :-)

Not much of Roman ruins to see nowadays unfortunately.

[+] aquadrop|8 years ago|reply
I just recently visited ruins of Tanais (most north-east town on this map) and it was also nice to find it here :) Feeling all that historical connection...
[+] susi22|8 years ago|reply
That's some coincidence. I'm from about 20 min south of there (Im.). I was surprised to see KE on there.
[+] vinceguidry|8 years ago|reply
I want to play MiniMetro on this map with Roman chariots instead of subway cars.
[+] m_st|8 years ago|reply
Great to see the "major" city of Aventicum indirectly mentioned on HN :-) We can still enjoy the amphitheatre for open air concerts and opera.
[+] Akarnani|8 years ago|reply
ASK HN: what's the service you use, ideally over the web, where you send a high-quality picture file and they return beautifully printed, large format, frameable prints?

Just contributed and need to send this files somewhere for printing and then find a framer. Thoughts?

[+] pier25|8 years ago|reply
RedBubble is where I buy hi quality artists' prints
[+] Kalium|8 years ago|reply
I believe Level Frames will both print and frame.
[+] xchaotic|8 years ago|reply
Do you find subway-style to be a good method of conveying information? People seem to have agreed that the use of distinct colors is good, but are there more efficient ways of conveying the same info, for a given size? For example London tube map doesn't waste space to show actual distance and I am looking for other ideas on how to compress this.
[+] andrewfelix|8 years ago|reply
The designer suggests it was done for aesthetic reasons. More importantly it held my interest a lot longer than a typical map might have, and thus I now know more about Ancient Roman roads!
[+] logingone|8 years ago|reply
I can't stand these subway maps. I carry a copy of the geographic tube map on my phone. I want to relate the locations to reality, and these subway maps fail to do that. I could possibly go along with a geographic map that changed scale toward the outside, as long as it included contour lines to indicate the reducing scale.
[+] amelius|8 years ago|reply
What exactly is the benefit of a subway diagram over a normal map? I suppose the only benefit is that it abstracts away geometry and relative distances, so it basically discards information. This could be useful, to make smaller distances more readable in a crowded subway.

But in this case ... what is the use of such a map?

[+] sumobob|8 years ago|reply
ordered! Super awesome work, love it! Question: Did you build this programmatically querying Orbis or just drew it by hand?
[+] ygra|8 years ago|reply
As for the layout I'd guess hand-drawing. It's not that large a graph to begin with and subway-style layout algorithms tend to be horribly slow.
[+] awjr|8 years ago|reply
Sadly I've found when developing tube maps that you need to tweak them to get them to look right.
[+] oskarth|8 years ago|reply
This is really neat. It'd be awesome to see famous people's hometown and traveling routes on top of this.
[+] jpdus|8 years ago|reply
Cached Version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TrHiyz4...
[+] bshimmin|8 years ago|reply
Unfortunately that seems to be missing the main bit one would care about, the actual map!
[+] gkya|8 years ago|reply
Maybe it's time when automatic archive links are added in HN. Maybe just below the posted link?
[+] boardmad|8 years ago|reply
Being hosted on #HN has killed it
[+] jedimastert|8 years ago|reply
I've started to see more and more of these "Tube map" style maps, and I've started to think about how one would go about making one pragmatically. Any thoughts or suggestions?
[+] singularity2001|8 years ago|reply
Vienna seems very off?
[+] awiesenhofer|8 years ago|reply
Back then present-day Vienna was called Vindobona, a small fort next to Carnuntum ;)
[+] eeks|8 years ago|reply
Many places in Gallia are off: Vienna is one; Augustodunum is certainly not at the same latitude as Lutetia; Genava is most certainly not south of Lugdunum; etc. Cool map otherwise !
[+] bluetwo|8 years ago|reply
Anyone else see the basis for a really cool game here?