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A Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire

203 points| adamcarson | 11 years ago |imperium.ahlfeldt.se | reply

28 comments

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[+] davidw|11 years ago|reply
It's interesting how empty northern Italy is compared to the center. If you look at where I am in "Patavium", there are just a few towns around, and not much else, but even off in the Marche, it's dotted with quite a few places. It does seem to be missing the 'graticolato Romano' to the east of Padova, though, which is still quite visible on maps today:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Padua,+Italy/@45.5036786,1... - it's the very regularly spaced grid in the middle of the map. The land was divided up to be given to ex-soldiers to colonize.

[+] seszett|11 years ago|reply
That's great, but it would be even better with Roman-era terrain instead of modern terrain.

In my place a 1000-km² or so area was at the time a sea dotted with islands, so seeing it as sea on the map would make it more obvious why the place is devoid of roman roads.

[+] markbnj|11 years ago|reply
Is there a reliable source for Roman-era terrain? Obviously some of it is known, but could we make a reliable map?

Anyway, this is a great visualization resource. Really well done.

[+] ekianjo|11 years ago|reply
Yeah, and Roma was a port and the sea was way closer to the city at the time, as far as I recall.
[+] walterbell|11 years ago|reply
Is this using/sharing data with http://pleiades.stoa.org/?

Edit: found a diagram that shows Pleiades supplying data to the Pelagios API used by this atlas: http://bsa.biblio.univ-lille3.fr/doc/gawd/gawd.html

[+] jpeg_hero|11 years ago|reply
This is why the web was made. Full fulling the promise of knowledge for all.
[+] crapshoot101|11 years ago|reply
So cool. If anyone is interested, I've spent the summer going through "The History of Rome" podcast from Mike Duncan (http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/), and even as someone who thought he knew a little bit about Roman history, its been fascinating - ie, we're just getting to the end of Caesar's reign, and we spent as much time on the Tarquins' as we did on Ceasar. I've heard great things about Dan Carlin, but I wanted to start from the beginning.
[+] hrasyid|11 years ago|reply
500 Internal Server Error ? Is there any cached version out there?
[+] Svip|11 years ago|reply
Something I've noticed, there doesn't appear to be any roads in Greece. Is this because the Romans didn't build any roads there and just used the Greek roads? If that's the case, then why aren't those roads on the map? I sincerely doubt all transport in Greece was done by ship.
[+] thaumasiotes|11 years ago|reply
Well, there are some relevant "stylized facts" about Greece...

- Greece has lots and lots of coastline

- The interior of Greece is largely mountains

So you'd be crazy to transport anything over land in Greece if you had the option of using water. That said, I'm sure there were some roads.

[+] antman|11 years ago|reply
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Egnatia Large roads were used for government purposes and private citizens had to get a permit. Commerce was conducted through shipping mostly. When Egyptian grain stopped, Thracian regions supported Rome so the roads in northern Greece improved. But that was right before the end...
[+] hayksaakian|11 years ago|reply
Missing data I presume?
[+] contingencies|11 years ago|reply
How I wish I'd had this while studying Latin, or while traveling in Tunisia! Anyone traveling Europe with an interest in history could probably benefit from this.
[+] sbmassey|11 years ago|reply
It would be nice to narrow the timescale down a bit from just Roman era. Or, better still, to be able to look at how it changes over time.
[+] kitwalker12|11 years ago|reply
where is the small village of indomitable Gauls