Tabula Peutingeriana

The Tabula Peutingeriana ('Peutinger's Table') is an itinerary that shows the road network of the Roman Empire. One of the copies can be seen in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The original map, of which only copies have survived, was made from the IV century, since Constantinople appears, which was refounded in the year 328. It covers Europe, parts of Asia (India) and North Africa. The map's name comes from Konrad Peutinger, a German humanist of the 15th and 16th centuries.

Transmission and content

The oldest copy of the Tabula Peutingeriana that has survived to this day was made by a monk from Colmar in the XIII. It is a scroll of parchment 0.34 m high and 6.75 m long, which was divided into 12 sheets or segments. The first of them, which would reproduce Hispania (Spain and Portugal) and the western part of the British Isles, has disappeared. The remaining 11 original sheets are preserved. The missing page was reconstructed in 1898 by Konrad Miller based on the well-known Antonine Itinerary.

It is a very schematic map: the land masses are distorted, especially in the east-west direction. It shows many Roman settlements, the roads that connect them, rivers, mountains and seas. It also includes the distances between settlements. The most important cities of the empire, Rome, Constantinople and Antioch, are represented with special decoration.

Controversy

There are doubts about whether the Tabula Peutingeriana should be called a "map", since it does not attempt to represent the actual shapes of the terrain. The Tabula is believed to be based on "itineraries", or lists of destinations along Roman roads. Travelers did not have anything as sophisticated as a map, but they needed to know what was ahead of them on the road and how far it was. The Tabula Peutingeriana represents these roads as a series of parallel lines along which destinations have been marked. The shape of the parchment pages explains the rectangular shape.

However, a vague similarity with Ptolemy's land gives arguments to those who argue that the unknown author tried to make a more or less faithful representation of the Earth.

Map

La Tabula Peutingerianafrom Iberia to the west, to India to the east.

Other ancient sources for the study of Roman roads

Iberian Peninsula