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Digital map of the Roman Empire - Robert Vermaat - 12-04-2015
Google-style digital map of the Roman Empire:
http://www.citymetric.com/horizons/bored-work-here-s-google-style-digital-map-roman-empire-play-1649
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Hasdrubal - 01-16-2016
I wish they would put up the boundaries of said time, like latium, umbria, sannones, eturia, trans and cisalpine gaul, etc, etc.
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Robert Vermaat - 01-18-2016
(01-16-2016, 05:49 AM)Hasdrubal Wrote: I wish they would put up the boundaries of said time, like latium, umbria, sannones, eturia, trans and cisalpine gaul, etc, etc.
I doubt we have the knowledge for that.
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Hasdrubal - 01-18-2016
Well I have a map/poster that shows me where the specific area (Latium, Eturia, Umbria, Samnium, etc) It would just be nice when you zoomed out to get that specific area.
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Robert Vermaat - 01-18-2016
(01-18-2016, 05:23 PM)Hasdrubal Wrote: Well I have a map/poster that shows me where the specific area (Latium, Eturia, Umbria, Samnium, etc) It would just be nice when you zoomed out to get that specific area.
I really doubt that the borders on your map are based on something more than modern borders and pure assumption.
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Hasdrubal - 01-18-2016
Life is full of assumptions but they're ideas of certain areas. Like if I tell you a town in Cisalpine Gaul you're going to know what part of the area to look in. Same thing if I tell you to look in Samnium, Umbria, Sennone (Which I believe is where Ariminium was at, and a part of Cisalpine Gallia) etc, etc. you're going to have an idea where to look at.
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Robert Vermaat - 01-19-2016
(01-18-2016, 11:02 PM)Hasdrubal Wrote: Life is full of assumptions but they're ideas of certain areas.
Totally agree, and there's no problem when you work on a big map.
But with digital maps you can zoom in to street level, and adding ancient provincial borders on such a map would be totally arbitrarily. It's a different ballgame.
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Hasdrubal - 01-19-2016
Yes, but it's the idea of seeing those borders when zoomed out that would be nice to see, even if they had a question mark next to them. People curious of Roman geography would have an basic idea.
Basically when I bring a new person to talk about Rome I can tell them about the Etruscans and show them Eturia in the general vicinity on the map.
Maybe if someone was telling me that Umbria was in southern Italy where Rhegium is, and then we could show them that it was more in upper central Italy.
Educational purposes really.
That's really the only thing in my opinion that's missing from this map, otherwise in my opinion it would be perfect.
As an American, and most Americans would be the same, I'm not very well with European geography. Now over the years I've educated myself, but it's taken a lot of dedication to find certain areas, with certain towns in Roman geography. The map in the link if given the boundaries would be at least in my opinion perfect if it was able to do that.
As I said that's just my opinion especially when certain history books talks about the Umbrians from Umbria, and the Samnites from Samnium. If I was uneducated by looking at the Roman map I would never know where those places are.
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Nathan Ross - 01-19-2016
Part of the problem, I think, is that the boundaries were quite fluid - even in those cases when we have a decent idea of where they were, they changed a great deal over the centuries. Towns and rivers, on the other hand, tend to stay in the same place! (although the names changed...)
So a digital map like this, which gives a lot of detail of geographical features, would struggle to represent the complexity of political or administrative borders over time, unless it was fixed at a single date (AD100, for example), which would limit its usefulness.
There are, of course, plenty of 'traditional' maps online which attempt to show such borders - this one of (republican?) northern Italy/Gaul, for example, or this one of the empire under Theodosius. It may be that in future we'll have more interactive mapping tools which could allow for fluctuations over time, and the uncertainties of guesswork, but for now we have to rely on a combination of old and new!
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - deleted - 10-13-2016
Very interesting and useful map, Thanks for sharing!
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - ValentinianVictrix - 10-26-2016
What time frame of the Empire does the map relate to?
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Nathan Ross - 10-26-2016
(10-26-2016, 08:20 AM)ValentinianVictrix Wrote: What time frame of the Empire does the map relate to?
Sort of all of them, Adrian (a bit like the Peutinger Table!). As mentioned above, there are no provincial boundaries shown, just settlements and roads. Most of the settlement names seem to be 'earlier' empire, but the later names are given in the notes (so Byzantium/Constantinopoulis is listed).
It's a really invaluable resource, I think, although as with any of these things it's always worth double-checking!
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - ValentinianVictrix - 10-26-2016
(10-26-2016, 12:03 PM)Nathan Ross Wrote:(10-26-2016, 08:20 AM)ValentinianVictrix Wrote: What time frame of the Empire does the map relate to?
Sort of all of them, Adrian (a bit like the Peutinger Table!). As mentioned above, there are no provincial boundaries shown, just settlements and roads. Most of the settlement names seem to be 'earlier' empire, but the later names are given in the notes (so Byzantium/Constantinopoulis is listed).
It's a really invaluable resource, I think, although as with any of these things it's always worth double-checking!
Thanks Nathan. I was querying as I saw Adrianople is not highlighted in Bold like other major cities are on the map, and other major cities also are not highlighted either. Which indicated to me perhaps the map deals with a more early Imperial period but has later period towns and cities added.
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - Nathan Ross - 10-26-2016
(10-26-2016, 12:27 PM)ValentinianVictrix Wrote: other major cities also are not highlighted either.
Yeah, it does have some strange idiosyncracies - major cities like Byzantium and Sirmium do not appear on the larger-scale maps, while, as you say, important places like Adrianople (or 'Hadrianoupolis', as it - accurately but a bit irritatingly - insists on spelling it!) often seem less prominent than their rather obscure neighbours (Bergoule? Que?).
But once you get the hang of it, it's pretty user-friendly and covers a broad time period quite effectively.
RE: Digital map of the Roman Empire - ValentinianVictrix - 10-26-2016
Do you think the person who created the digital map consulted the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World?