ordered! Super awesome work, love it! Question: Did you build this programmatically querying Orbis or just drew it by hand?
Sadly I've found when developing tube maps that you need to tweak them to get them to look right.
A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
31–40 of 107 posts
Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
#32It'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.
Settlements tended to concentrate along the cost and other water edges, for reasons of food availability, soil fertility, and access to the water base transport you mention. Existing local routes between them would have been used and upgraded as needed rather than building new links except where the time+capital expenditure made it worth while.
Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
#33Tabula 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.
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.)
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Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
#34Do the colors represent anything? It feels like they could have continued on in many places.
Different color means different road. The angles are not based on reality, so you can't really say that the roads 'continue' based on this image, they are merely starting/ending in the same city.
Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
#35I'm on vacation in Lutetia right now!
Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
#36It'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.
I'm off the impression that the Romans didn't travel by sea often, based on accounts of the cruising of the English channel; they seemed terrified of the sea. Not exactly sure why they didn't do this more often; maybe their strategy was to move by land and secure a spot channel as they went?
Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
#37It'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.
Romans were notoriously poor sailors. Even when they acquired total domination over all sides of the Med (through sheer stubbornness and massive production of naval units, so that they could move enough land troops to the other side rather than trying to win naval battles), they couldn't completely eradicate piracy; this means sea routes were cheaper but not necessarily safer.
Also, I believe coastal routes were mostly connecting town to town in organic ways. An inland route was usually planned explicitly, and hence named for the consul or emperor who approved it, whereas it looks to me like the coastal routes took more topographical names (adriatica etc) or ended up as extensions of original inland routes (aurelia).
Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
#38Tabula 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.
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.)
See http://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/talbertdatabase/TPPlace3... and http://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/talbertdatabase/TPPlace2....
Edit: seems to be somewhere within the Iraqi marshlands: http://www.indiana.edu/~nelc/events/documents/Jwaideh/jwaide... (back then at least).
Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
#39It'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.
I'm off the impression that the Romans didn't travel by sea often, based on accounts of the cruising of the English channel; they seemed terrified of the sea. Not exactly sure why they didn't do this more often; maybe their strategy was to move by land and secure a spot channel as they went?
I don't know much about the Roman history, but a thought: There's a difference between crossing a sea and traveling on the sea skirting the coast (keeping the coastline always in sight).
Shipping large amounts of grain from Egypt was vital for the livelihood of the populace of Rome the city, so there was some maritime know-how in the empire.
Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
#40Cached Version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TrHiyz4...