
A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD - curtis
http://sashat.me/2017/06/03/roman-roads/
======
kybernetikos
Tabula 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...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/TabulaPeutingeriana.jpg)

It also has a 'subway' feel, given that not much attention has been paid to
getting the shapes correct.

~~~
cannam
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.)

~~~
freshbob
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samosata)
is the modern city of Samsat
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhesaina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhesaina)
is Ressaina (see
[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:19...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:id=rhesaena-
geo))
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeugma,_Commagene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeugma,_Commagene)
Zeugma is near modern-day Gaziantep

The location of historic Tharrana is apparently not finally known. Harran,
Turkey is one possibility mentioned at
[http://www.euratlas.net/cartogra/peutinger/10_mesopotamia/me...](http://www.euratlas.net/cartogra/peutinger/10_mesopotamia/mesopotamia_5_3.html).

Since all reference points are in Turkey or Syria, best guess is that the
cirular lake with the island is Al Jaboul Lake, 36.024360"N, 37.610087"E. It
used to be a tributary to the Euphrates but no source I could find states
exactly when that changed.

~~~
nkoren
Good guess!

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

[https://goo.gl/maps/ubW2hp1Wh6N2](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.

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IngoBlechschmid
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/..](https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/..).
(just based on the honor system, from both sides). If you love Sasha's subway-
style diagram of the major Roman roads as much as I do, then consider pledging
a certain amount at that Etherpad for setting the map free.

Cheers, Ingo

 _Update_ : Sasha replied to a private mail of mine in a very kind way. He
won't set the map free right now. Please still consider supporting him if you
like his work. :-)

~~~
davidw
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.

------
johan_larson
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.

~~~
toyg
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).

~~~
HarryHirsch
_they couldn 't completely eradicate piracy_

I understand that fighting piracy was a political problem. Pirates were
mobile, and while any commander could suppress piracy in any area those not
caught would move elsewhere and return when the commander's _imperium_ was
over and he had to return to Rome to give account.

It was feared that an admiral who was given an _imperium_ for the whole of the
Mediterranean would have such power that he would use it for political ands
and upturn the system. So piracy grew with Roman hegemony, and when the seas
had become so unsafe that the security of the grain supply was a political
issue something had to be done. It turned out that the fears were well-
founded, Pompeius was given his _imperium maius_ over all the Mediterranean
and 50 miles inland, he squashed piracy, and the First Triumvirate followed.

------
gtrubetskoy
Here is a github-hosted copy that isn't subject to the hosting rate-limits
until we sort out what to do:

[https://sashatrubetskoy.github.io/romanmap/](https://sashatrubetskoy.github.io/romanmap/)

Edit: I am not the author, I'm too old for this :)

~~~
Akarnani
It's really lovely. Thanks for doing this. I contributed and look forward to
hanging it up once I figure out printing.

How long did it take?

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trynewideas
See also Orbis: [http://orbis.stanford.edu/](http://orbis.stanford.edu/)

~~~
prewett
Unfortunately, they've decided that Firefox 53 is an "older browser." There
needs to be some ECMAScript versioning, some isFeatureAvailable() so that we
can stop having this problem.

The older version of the map reminds me of Civ 1.

~~~
bzbarsky
It gets worse. Per comments on [https://github.com/webcompat/web-
bugs/issues/172](https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/172) if you just
spoof the Chrome or Safari UA string the site works fine...

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_Codemonkeyism
Very happily my hometown of Cambodunum is there, feeling strangishly proud.
Sadly in 125AD we we're no longer a capital of Raetia, lost that to Augusta
Vindelicorum.

~~~
susi22
That's some coincidence. I'm from about 20 min south of there (Im.). I was
surprised to see KE on there.

~~~
distances
20 minutes by foot or horse?

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duncans
Mirror of image [https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV](https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV)

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vinceguidry
I want to play MiniMetro on this map with Roman chariots instead of subway
cars.

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m_st
Great to see the "major" city of Aventicum indirectly mentioned on HN :-) We
can still enjoy the amphitheatre for open air concerts and opera.

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Akarnani
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?

~~~
jdhawk
I've used Canvas Press several times with good results.
[http://www.canvaspress.com/](http://www.canvaspress.com/)

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rusanu
Tangential: George Dow[0] and Harry Beck[1] created the 'Tube map'.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dow)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Beck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Beck)

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xchaotic
Do you find subway-style to be a good method of conveying information? People
seem to have agreed that the use of distinct colors is good, but are there
more efficient ways of conveying the same info, for a given size? For example
London tube map doesn't waste space to show actual distance and I am looking
for other ideas on how to compress this.

~~~
andrewfelix
The designer suggests it was done for aesthetic reasons. More importantly it
held my interest a lot longer than a typical map might have, and thus I now
know more about Ancient Roman roads!

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amelius
What exactly is the benefit of a subway diagram over a normal map? I suppose
the only benefit is that it abstracts away geometry and relative distances, so
it basically discards information. This could be useful, to make smaller
distances more readable in a crowded subway.

But in this case ... what is the use of such a map?

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sumobob
ordered! Super awesome work, love it! Question: Did you build this
programmatically querying Orbis or just drew it by hand?

~~~
ygra
As for the layout I'd guess hand-drawing. It's not that large a graph to begin
with and subway-style layout algorithms tend to be horribly slow.

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oskarth
This is really neat. It'd be awesome to see famous people's hometown and
traveling routes on top of this.

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jpdus
Cached Version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TrHiyz4...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TrHiyz4tPV8J:sashat.me/2017/06/03/roman-
roads/+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de)

~~~
bshimmin
Unfortunately that seems to be missing the main bit one would care about, the
actual map!

~~~
paraknight
Outside of the cached version, the map image itself seems to be accessible:
[https://sashat.me/wp-
content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.p...](https://sashat.me/wp-
content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.png)

I uploaded it to imgur just in case:
[https://i.imgur.com/4Ozk1tF.png](https://i.imgur.com/4Ozk1tF.png)

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boardmad
Being hosted on #HN has killed it

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jedimastert
I've started to see more and more of these "Tube map" style maps, and I've
started to think about how one would go about making one pragmatically. Any
thoughts or suggestions?

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singularity2001
Vienna seems very off?

~~~
vesinisa
It is - on the map it refers to the modern-day Vienne, near Lyon (Lugdunum):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienne,_Is%C3%A8re](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienne,_Is%C3%A8re)

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bluetwo
Anyone else see the basis for a really cool game here?

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f_allwein
Might help to add present-day names as well? I found it hard to research some
of these on Wikipedia...

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flukus
Do the colors represent anything? It feels like they could have continued on
in many places.

~~~
rejschaap
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.

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KTamasEnty
mirror:
[https://sashatrubetskoy.github.io/romanmap/](https://sashatrubetskoy.github.io/romanmap/)
(mods: can you update the link?)

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peter303
Should do this for the planets in Star Trek Federation.

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mtokunaga
It's more like a Highspeed Railway System Map. ;-)

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campuscodi
Any mirrors? The site appears to be down.

~~~
duncans
[https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV](https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV)

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idlewords
The commute is just brutal.

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justinzollars
florentia is where its at.

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minademian
truly brilliant.

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vikas5914
Nice

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emiliobumachar
"The web service to this account has been limited temporarily!"

HN hug of death strikes again?

~~~
duncans
[https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV](https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV)

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weberc2
I'm on vacation in Lutetia right now!

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fsiefken
Why is Jerusalem not marked? Was the city not big enough at the time?

~~~
Rotten194
It is marked, as Aelia Capitolina. It was renamed after the emperor Hadrian
razed the city and expelled its Jewish population in the aftermath of a
revolt.

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falsedan
> _The way we travel on roads is very different from rail, which is a slight
> flaw in the concept of the map_

You said it, author!

