A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD • Hacker News Board

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#91

Post by nkoren » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 5:23 PM UTC

freshbob wrote: post #75

cannam wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

If you look at the map, you can see Samosata up north on the Euphrates, Ressaina between Euphrates and Tigris and Zeugma to the west. Tharrana is next to the circular lake with the island. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samosata is the modern city of Samsat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhesaina is Ressaina (see http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:19... ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeugma,_Com…

Good guess!

Here's an alternate proposal: Raqqah. Check it out on the map:

https://goo.gl/maps/ubW2hp1Wh6N2

It obviously isn't in a lake, but it looks like the the tributary coming down from Harran goes both west and east of Raqqah, making it an island of sorts. The shape made by the this "island" is reasonably close to circular. Finally, per the map, it's southeast of Zuegma and south of Harran.

Obviously hypothesising wildly, but this map is just way too much fun.

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#92

Post by pier25 » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

Akarnani wrote: post #85

ASK HN: what's the service you use, ideally over the web, where you send a high-quality picture file and they return beautifully printed, large format, frameable prints? Just contributed and need to send this files somewhere for printing and then find a framer. Thoughts?

RedBubble is where I buy hi quality artists' prints

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#93

Post by Tyr42 » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #87

usrusr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words: Germanic tribes were using the defensive strategy of not preparing wheat fields for invaders to harvest during campaigning season. Kind of equivalent to cyberdefense by pen and paper. Half of Cesar's Gallic War seems to be more than half about grain logistics (huge efforts to start the campaigns jus a few weeks earlier) and ripeness of the local crops. And that is even while he was likely trying to do…

Romans didn't just pillage, they also planted stuff like chestnut trees as they moved up and down Europe, so that they could use them in following years. Regardless, I find it difficult to believe that already-struggling tribes would further starve themselves just in case this or that opponent tried to invade. It's much more likely that they simply weren't able to grow much more in what was a hard soil, without the s…

Not to mention the fact that by the third century, if a general controlled enough troops, they would (and did) overthrow the Emperor, so the Emperor tended to run around with one large army putting out fires, which was inefficient.

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#94

Post by Akarnani » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

Akarnani wrote: post #85

ASK HN: what's the service you use, ideally over the web, where you send a high-quality picture file and they return beautifully printed, large format, frameable prints? Just contributed and need to send this files somewhere for printing and then find a framer. Thoughts?

Thanks, @pier25 @jdhawk!

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#95

Post by davidw » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 6:45 PM UTC

IngoBlechschmid wrote: post #90

Dear Sasha, this is brilliant. I know the perfect person to give your map as a present and will buy the high-quality PDF no matter what. But let's try an experiment! Can you name a price for setting the map free? By which I mean, releasing it and all source materials under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license of your choosing? If so, then, dear Internet, let's crowdfund at https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/.. . (jus…

Selling copies to people who want it is more efficient than the crowdfunding approach: the people get their maps right away, and the author gets money right away. There's less friction in this approach.

Of course, we don't get the source code, which is a loss to some people, but all that extra "friction" involved in the crowdfunding path is why simply selling stuff directly is an easier way to make money. It also requires less guesswork on the part of the author as to how much they may be able to extract from the work, in total.

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#96

Post by Symbiote » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 7:09 PM UTC

aqsalose wrote: post #39

weberc2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except in this case, you can see Britain from France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Dover

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#97

Post by Kalium » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 8:10 PM UTC

Akarnani wrote: post #85

ASK HN: what's the service you use, ideally over the web, where you send a high-quality picture file and they return beautifully printed, large format, frameable prints? Just contributed and need to send this files somewhere for printing and then find a framer. Thoughts?

I believe Level Frames will both print and frame.

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#98

Post by gozur88 » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 9:06 PM UTC

azernik wrote: post #73

johan_larson wrote: post #29

It'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.

Going off of much later European experience, this depended on the type of traffic. Despite the speed and cost/weight advantages of sea travel, the Habsburg Spanish empire maintained a land route between their possessions in Italy and the Netherlands [1]. Road travel had the advantage of reliability - more resistant to both natural disasters and to enemy action in war. This was very important for moving military force…

The big other military advantage to roads is you may simply not have enough ships available to move the massive army you put together when you decide you've had just about enough of those pesky Gauls.

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#99

Post by usrusr » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 9:17 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #87

usrusr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words: Germanic tribes were using the defensive strategy of not preparing wheat fields for invaders to harvest during campaigning season. Kind of equivalent to cyberdefense by pen and paper. Half of Cesar's Gallic War seems to be more than half about grain logistics (huge efforts to start the campaigns jus a few weeks earlier) and ripeness of the local crops. And that is even while he was likely trying to do…

Romans didn't just pillage, they also planted stuff like chestnut trees as they moved up and down Europe, so that they could use them in following years. Regardless, I find it difficult to believe that already-struggling tribes would further starve themselves just in case this or that opponent tried to invade. It's much more likely that they simply weren't able to grow much more in what was a hard soil, without the s…

> Regardless, I find it difficult to believe that already-struggling tribes would further starve themselves just in case this or that opponent tried to invade.

Allow me to apologize for my lack of precision, I never intend to imply that they deliberately avoided "invader-friendly" crops. Wheat just had not spread that far, due to climate (not yet sufficiently adapted by breeding?) and/or cultural reasons: nomadism (well, more effect than cause I guess) and the fact that large scale forest clearances are the type of project that can only happen in presence of big organizations that are stable enough to enable such long term investments. Many German settlements still carry the name of the medieval nobleman who commissioned the original clearance (names ending in -rode, -roda, -reuth and probably some more regional variations), which implies that before the clearance, there was only wilderness.

Re: A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD

#100

Post by usrusr » Thu, Jun 08, 2017, 9:48 PM UTC

Tyr42 wrote: post #93

toyg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Romans didn't just pillage, they also planted stuff like chestnut trees as they moved up and down Europe, so that they could use them in following years. Regardless, I find it difficult to believe that already-struggling tribes would further starve themselves just in case this or that opponent tried to invade. It's much more likely that they simply weren't able to grow much more in what was a hard soil, without the s…

Not to mention the fact that by the third century, if a general controlled enough troops, they would (and did) overthrow the Emperor, so the Emperor tended to run around with one large army putting out fires, which was inefficient.

And many of those soldiers where mercenaries from the outside, who, by serving the empire, where put in the position to loot the empire's superior agriculture.

This went on for many generations, it's not a "last days before the ostrogoths" exception. Competing "emperor startups" in an empire representing pretty much the entire known civilized world, surrounded by mostly harmless outlaw wilderness. It must have felt as natural and "could the world even be not like this?" to the people populating that world as nation states, competing militarily, economically and in the Olympics seem natural to us.