Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (review)

The Peutinger map is an amazing artifact that resides in Austria’s National Library in Vienna. It is a long (672 cm, ca. 22 foot), narrow (33 cm, ca. 1 foot), vividly colored, and highly detailed map of the ancient Roman world, divided into eleven parchment sections. It is an unwieldy and complex document in which roads and rivers predominate. It contains hundreds of place names. Soon after its discovery by the German humanist Konrad Celtis around 1500, it entered the collection of Konrad Peutinger in Augsburg (hence its name). The map was treasured by learned German humanists, who were enthralled by Tacitus’s Germania and who sought to help the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, forge a link between himself and ancient Rome. Despite their good efforts and those of subsequent scholars, including the creation of copies, the present bipartite publication represents the first thorough modern study and edition of the map.

The first part of the publication is the book. It comprises a meticulously detailed history of the map since 1500, a study of the map itself (which is thought to be a copy from around 1200 of an even longer-lost original), an astute analysis of what the original map must have been like, and a study of the map’s influence on medieval cartography. The book includes seven appendixes, including a user’s guide correlating features of the map with the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (maps of the ancient world drawn according to modern norms, also edited by Richard Talbert) and with ancient itineraries (registers of places and distances along the routes of the Roman Empire).

The second part comprises a digital edition of the map in the form of a hypertext document collection with interactive graphic applications (http://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/). The entire, colorful map can be seen in sections and magnified. An extensive database lists virtually every feature, including every named item (coastlines, rivers, islands, towns and cities, mountains, routes, peoples, and regions). A click on the item provides the appropriate visual detail, often further information in a comment, and references. The map files and software (which involve fairly extensive downloading) allow features of the map, such as routes, to be overlaid onto the Barrington Atlas.

This book and digital edition is a momentous scholarly achievement. It is an exemplary study of a highly significant and unusual artifact that would repay the scrutiny of anyone looking at historical maps or ancient and medieval history. Talbert describes the map in great detail. His description, which extends over three chapters, first analyzes the (parchment) map as a physical object. Included is an analysis (by Martin Steinmann) of the paleography. In his discussion of the design and character of the map, Talbert convincingly argues against the traditional view that the map is basically a route network, meant to guide travelers, with physical features added for decoration. Instead, he suggests, it has a cartographical basis, and its elongated shape was deliberate. In the original map, the city of Rome was at the center (meaning that three sections are missing from the Peutinger map). The principal elements of the physical landscape are coastlines that define the mainland, rivers (over 130), open water including lakes, over 100 islands, mountains (140, many not named), and peoples and regions. The main settlements are marked by pictorial symbols, often two connected towers, and notably not by “point symbols,” or in common parlance, dots.

Talbert moves from a detailed description of the existing map to an analysis of added elements not on the original, and then to the cartographical traditions drawn on by the original mapmaker (who, he suggests, was a painter rather than a scholarly cartographer). He reconstructs the period, context, and purpose of the original map. It was, he cogently argues, created around 300 during Diocletian’s Tetrarchy. It was a wall map made for propagandistic purposes—perhaps for the apse of the imperial reception hall. Its purpose...