The Nature and Genesis of the Peutinger Map

Abstract

The place of the Peutinger map in the history of both ancient and medieval geography and cartography is controversial. Many basic questions as to its sources, dating and purpose remain unanswered. In the light of various pieces of new evidence these problems are reassessed. It is argued that the Peutinger map does derive from a Roman original but that, without precedent in Roman cartography or impact on later medieval cartography, the mapping of itinerary data onto a base map of the oecumene is likely to be a genuine innovation of the designer of the archetype. There is no need to suppose the map to be an officially state‐sponsored product. The sources relied upon were commonly available and would have been familiar to the public in late antiquity. The purpose of the map is more likely to have been ornamental than practical. It is impossible to determine a precise date or location for the creation of the archetype, but the cultural viewpoint embodied in the map is undoubtedly antique, Latin and western.

Keywords:

• Peutinger map
• Tabula Peutingeriana
• Roman cartography
• Roman geography
• Roman itineraries
• milestones
• tabellaria
• Carolingian maps
• medieval cartography

Acknowledgements

Early versions of this paper were delivered to the Maps and Society seminar at the Warburg Institute and to the Ancient Society seminar at the Institute of Classical Studies in London on 17 February and 25 April 1997 respectively. A slightly more mature version was aired at the Ancient History seminar of the Institute of Classical Studies, London, and the Nottingham University Institute for Medieval Studies seminar on 19 October and 23 November 2000. I am indebted to the audiences on all four occasions for their comments, to discussions and correspondence with the editors of this journal and, in particular, to my collaborators on the Peutinger map project for the Liverpool University Press Translated Texts for Historians series, Professors Emily Albu (University of California, Davis) and Richard Talbert (University of North Carolina), which in no way is to be taken as implying that either of them endorses the sentiments expressed here.

Notes

Benet Salway is lecturer in ancient history at University College London.

The Peutinger map remains unique, despite the second‐century Geography of Ptolemy, since the balance of current opinion is that the maps accompanying the Byzantine and early Renaissance manuscripts of Ptolemy's work were almost certainly generated from the texts rather than copied from illustrations in any ancient exemplar. See Oswald A. W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (London, Thames and Hudson, 1985), 76–81; idem, ‘The culmination of Greek cartography in Ptolemy’, in The History of Cartography,Vol. 1, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1987), 177–200, at 189–90; and J. Lennart Berggren and Alexander Jones, Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters (Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2000), 45–52.

Kai Brodersen has been the proponent of the most sceptical thesis in his Terra Cognita: Studien zur römischen Raumerfassung (Hildesheim, Georg Olms 1995; 2nd ed. 2003). See the review by Richard J. A. Talbert in Imago Mundi 49 (1997): 177, and the comments in idem, ‘Cartography and taste in Peutinger's Roman map’ in Space in the Roman World: Its Perception and Presentation, ed. Richard Talbert and Kai Brodersen (Münster, Lit Verlag, 2004), 113–41, especially 117 and 131. Kai Brodersen, ‘Mapping (in) the ancient world’, Journal of Roman Studies 94 (2004): 183–90, provides a general overview of recent work.

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex Vindobonensis 324.

Such was the assessment of Bernard Bischoff according to Ekkehard Weber, Tabula Peutingeriana: Codex Vindobonensis 324. Kommentar (Graz, Akademische Druck‐ und Verlagsanstalt, 1976), 11.

Hans Rupprich, Der Briefwechsel des Konrad Celtes (Munich, C.H. Beck, 1934), 606.

The standard facsimile edition is Weber, Tabula Peutingeriana (see note 4). Konrad Miller's apograph, Die Weltkarte des Castorius genannt die Peutingersche Tafel (Ravensburg, Maier, 1887/1888), was most recently reproduced in Tabula Peutingeriana: Le antiche vie del mondo, ed. Francesco Prontera (Florence, Leo S. Olschki, 2003). On the publication history of the Peutinger map, see Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘La trasmissione medievale e rinascimentale della Tabula Peutingeriana’, in Prontera, Tabula Peutingeriana (above, this note), 43–52, at 50–52; and Talbert, ‘Cartography and taste in Peutinger's Roman map’ (note 2), 132–41.

For more on the electronic edition see <www.unc.edu/awmc/rttpeut.html>, as well as Talbert, ‘Cartography and taste in Peutinger's Roman map’ (note 2), 113, 141. Miller, Die Weltkarte (see note 6), numbered the surviving parchment segments II–XII and subdivided each one vertically into five equal sections (1–5). Weber, Tabula Peutingeriana (see note 4), kept the same vertical divisions but renumbered the parchments I–XI and added the refinement of dividing the roll horizontally into three registers (o, m, u). Talbert has retained Weber's grid, but he rechristens the registers A–C and prefers arabic numeration throughout. So, for example, Rome  =  V.5 [Miller]  =  IV 5 m [Weber]  =  4B5 [Talbert].

Gudrun Bühl, Constantinopolis und Roma: Stadtpersonifikationen der Spätantike (Zürich, Akanthvs, 1995), especially 131–32.

For an analysis of the map signs, see Annalina Caló Levi and Mario Attilio Levi, Itineraria Picta: Contributo allo studio della Tabula Peutingeriana (Rome, L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1967), 222–23; and Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (note 1), 115–16, with Appendix V, 193–95.

Itineraria Romana I: Itineraria Antonini Augusti et Burdigalense, ed. Otto Cuntz (Leipzig, B.G. Teubner, 1929), reproduced with updated bibliography by Gerhard Wirth (Stuttgart, B.G. Teubner, 1990). For a detailed collation of the Peutinger map against the Antonine Itinerary and other Roman itineraries then known see Konrad Miller, Itineraria Romana: Römische Reisewege an der Hand der Tabula Peutingeriana dargestellt (Stuttgart, Strecker & Schröder, 1916).

See Benet Salway, ‘Travel, itineraria and tabellaria’, in Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire, ed. Colin Adams and Ray Laurence (London and New York, Routledge, 2001), 22–66, at 26–28, for a full discussion.

See, for example, Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (note 1), 114.

Oswald A. W. Dilke, ‘Itineraries and geographical maps in the early and later Roman empires’, in Harley and Woodward, History of Cartography (see note 1), 234–65, especially 234, 238.

On the two traditions see Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (note 1), 31–53, 173–74; and Francesco Prontera, ‘La Tabula Peutingeriana nella storia della cartografia antica’, 17–41, at 23–32, and Gautier Dalché, ‘La trasmissione medievale e rinascimentale della Tabula Peutingeriana’, 43–46; both in Prontera, Tabula Peutingeriana (note 6).

David Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, in Harley and Woodward, History of Cartography (see note 1), 286–370, at 303–4; and John Williams, ‘Isidore, Orosius and the Beatus map’, Imago Mundi 49 (1997): 7–32.

On the nature of literary uolumina see William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2004), 3–13, with Fig. 1 (p. x). The height of the Peutinger map (32–34 cm) is somewhat greater than normal for a literary papyrus roll but is almost the same as that of the recently publicized illustrated prestige copy of Artemidorus of Ephesus's Geographoúmena (32.5 cm), as reported by Claudio Gallazzi and Bärbel Kramer, ‘Artemidor in Zeichensaal. Eine Papyrusrolle mit Text, Landkarte und Skizzenbüchern aus späthellenisticher Zeit’, Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiet 44 (1998): 198–208, at 198 n.2.

Ekkehard Weber, ‘Zur Datierung der Tabula Peutingeriana’, in Labor omnibus unus: Gerold Walser zum 70. Geburtstag dargebracht von Freunden, Kollegen und Schülern, ed. Heinz Ernst Herzig and Regula Frei‐Stolba; Historia Einzelschrift 60 (Stuttgart, F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1989), 113–17, provides a concise survey of opinions.

On the reading of uolumina, see Susan Wood, ‘Literacy and luxury in the early empire: a papyrus‐roll winder from Pompeii’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 46 (2001): 23–40, especially 26–29.

Talbert, ‘Cartography and taste in Peutinger's Roman map’ (see note 2), 130.

Pellegrino Prisciani, Annales Ferrarienses (Modena, Archivio di Stato, MS 129), fol. 44v, on which see Gautier Dalché, ‘La trasmissione medievale e rinascimentale della Tabula Peutingeriana’ (note 6), 48, with Fig. 2. A fuller publication is promised by Gautier Dalché in Revue d'histoire des textes 33 (2003), forthcoming.

See Gautier Dalché, ‘La trasmissione medievale e rinascimentale della Tabula Peutingeriana’ (note 6), 48–49.

The Padua map cannot be mistaken for the Peutinger map because of differences in detail, specifically the inclusion in Prisciani's sketch of it of Forum Alieni, between Hostilia and Ravenna, and the presence on it elsewhere of Greek letters reported in his notes.

Ptolemy, Geography, 1.1, transl. Berggren and Jones, Ptolemy's Geography (see note 1), 57–59.

Miller, Die Weltkarte (see note 6), xl–xlii.

Konrad Miller, Mappaemundi. Die ältesten Weltkarten, vol. VI, Rekonstruierte Karten (Stuttgart, J. Roth, 1898), Taf. 5, on which see Talbert, ‘Cartography and taste in Peutinger's Roman map’ (note 2), 120, 135.

Talbert, ‘Cartography and taste in Peutinger's Roman map’ (note 2), 120–21.

Salway, ‘Travel, itineraria and tabellaria’ (see note 11), 41–43.

For the route network coming first, see Weber, Tabula Peutingeriana (note 4), 12; and Brodersen, Terra Cognita (note 2), 187. For the outline of the oecumene first, see Talbert, ‘Cartography and taste in Peutinger's Roman map’ (note 2), 124.

Emil Schweder, ‘Über den Ursprung und die ältere Forme der Peutingerschen Tafel’, Jahrbuch für Philologie 39 (1893): 485–512.

Peutinger added the glosses ‘Regenspurg’ and ‘Salzpurg’ to Regino and Iuauo respectively (3A4), on which see Weber, Tabula Peutingeriana (note 4), 9. Consider the up‐dating in manuscript versions of Ptolemy in the 15th century (James R. Akerman, ‘From books with maps to books as maps: the editor in the creation of the atlas idea’, in Editing Early and Historical Atlases: Papers Given at the Twenty‐Ninth Conference on Editorial Problems, University of Toronto, 5–6 November 1993, ed. Joan Winearls (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1995), 3–48, at 9–10).

Gautier Dalché, ‘La trasmissione medievale e rinascimentale della Tabula Peutingeriana’ (see note 6), 45–46.

For example, Peutinger map, 8C5: ‘Desertum u(b)i quadraginta annis errauer(un)t filij Isr(ae)l(is) ducente Moyse’ [Desert where the sons of Israel wandered for forty years under Moses’ leadership]; and 11C4–5: ‘in his locis elephanti nascuntur’ [in these places elephants are born]. On these captions see Gautier Dalché, ‘La trasmissione medievale e rinascimentale della Tabula Peutingeriana’ (note 6), 44 with Fig. 1.

In the regional name provincia africa (2C5–6C3), only the second element is rubricated, de‐emphasizing prouincia. Asia (8B1–9B1) is written noticeably larger than the labels of the other provinces of Asia Minor. The Peutinger map, however, lacks a label for Europe.

In Decimius Magnus Ausonius, Ordo urbium nobilium, we find Rome, Constantinople, Carthage, Antioch, Alexandria, Trier, Milan, Capua, Aquileia, Arles, Seville, Athens, Catania, Syracuse, Toulouse, Narbonne and (last but not least) Bordeaux.

Levi and Levi, Itineraria Picta (see note 9), 147, prefer to put the redactor in the east because of the prominence of Antioch.

See note 34 above.

Hence the early fifth‐century rather than mid fourth‐century date favoured for the archetype by Levi and Levi, Itineraria Picta (note 9), 174.

For example, Thessalonica, like Carthage, is not independently labelled but named in the locative ‘Tessalonicę’ (7B2) as part of the route network.

The order Aquileia–Ravenna is a plausible alternative, assuming travel by sea from Ravenna to the opposite shore of the Adriatic.

I am indebted to Professor Talbert for drawing my attention to the coastal detail here. For a detailed discussion of the maritime aspect of the Peutinger map, see Benet Salway, ‘Sea and river travel in the Roman itinerary literature’, in Talbert and Brodersen, Space in the Roman World (note 2), 43–96, at 89–92.

Ad Matricem is identified with modern Bugojno by Weber, Tabula Peutingeriana (see note 4), 44, but with Otinovci near Kupres in the Map‐by‐Map Directory of the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, ed. R. J. A. Talbert (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000). The uniqueness of the place sign is also noted by Gautier Dalché, ‘La trasmissione medievale e rinascimentale della Tabula Peutingeriana’ (see note 6), 46.

Itineraria Romana II: Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia et Guidonis Geographica, ed. Joseph Schnetz (Leipzig, B.G. Teubner, 1940), reprinted with an index added by Marianne Zumschlinge (Stuttgart, B.G. Teubner, 1990), 1–110.

As demonstrated by Pascal Arnaud, ‘L’origine, la date de rédaction et la diffusion de l'archétype de la Table de Peutinger’, Bulletin de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France (1988): 302–21; and Louis Dillemann, La Cosmographie du Ravennate (Brussels, Latomus, 1997), 27, 53–58.

For the Greek elements see Arnaud, ‘L’origine, la date de rédaction et la diffusion de l'archétype de la Table de Peutinger’ (note 43), 316. For the up‐dated toponyms see, for example, Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia (note 42), IV 24 [60, 10–12]: Maguntia (modern Mainz), Anternacha (Andernach); IV 26 [61, 27–46]: Sphira (Speyer), Stratisburgum (Strasbourg), Bazela (Basel), Wrzacha (Rorschach), Ziaberna (Rheinzabern), Ziurichi (Zürich).

Conversely, Gautier Dalché, ‘La trasmissione medievale e rinascimentale della Tabula Peutingeriana’ (see note 6), 48, considers the Padua Cosmography evidence for a multilingual archetype shared with the Peutinger map, the latter's exclusive Latinity reflecting its descent through a branch in which Greek characters had been suppressed in an intervening Carolingian copy.

Where, perhaps significantly, Gautier Dalché is able to place a much discussed notice recording the copying, in 1265, of a world map onto twelve sheets of parchment hitherto thought to have been executed in Colmar (Gautier Dalché, ‘La trasmissione medievale e rinascimentale della Tabula Peutingeriana’ (note 6), 47–48). This might refer to the production of the Padua map itself or a copy made from it.

As suggested by Hans Lieb, ‘Zur Herkunft der Tabula Peutingeriana’ in Die Abtei Reichenau: Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte und Kultur des Inselklosters, ed. Helmut Maurer (Sigmaringen, Jan Thorbecke, 1974), 31–33.

J. Wilhelm Kubitschek, ‘Itinerarien’, in Paulys Real‐Encyclopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft, 9 (Stuttgart, J.B. Metzler, 1914), col. 2336; idem, ‘Karten’, in ibid., 10 (1919), cols 2101–18.

J. Wilhelm Kubitschek, ‘Eine römische Straßenkarte’, Jahreshefte des Österreichischen archäologischen Instituts in Wien 5 (1902): 20–96, at 81; idem, ‘Itinerarien’ (see note 48); idem, ‘Karten’ (see note 48).

Weber, Tabula Peutingeriana (see note 4), 22–23, Luciano Bosio, La Tabula Peutingeriana. Una descrizione pittorica del mondo antico (Rimini, Maggioli, 1983), 158–59; Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1991), 102–3; Jean‐Marie André & Marie‐Françoise Baslez, Voyager dans l'Antiquité (Paris, Fayard, 1993), 399; and Manlio Magini, ‘In viaggio lungo le strade della Tabula Peutingeriana’, in Prontera, Tabula Peutingeriana (see note 6), 7–15, at 8.

See, for example, Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (note 1), 113–14, and idem, ‘Itineraries and geographical maps in the early and later Roman empires’ (see note 13), 234.

Brodersen, Terra Cognita (see note 2), 284–87.

Kai Brodersen, ‘Mapping the ancient world’, Ad Familiares: Journal of the Friends of Classics 17 (Autumn 1999): 2–4; idem, ‘The presentation of geographical knowledge for travel and transport in the Roman world: itineraria non tantum adnotata sed etiam picta’, in Adams and Laurence, Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire (see note 11), 7–21; and, most recently, idem, ‘Die Tabula Peutingeriana. Gehalt und Gestalt einer “alten Karte” und ihrer antiken Vorlagen’, in Geschichtsdeuting auf alten Karten: Archäologie und Geschichte, ed. Dagmar Unverhau (Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2003), 289–97. The term itinerarium pictum is taken from the late Roman military manual of Vegetius (De re militari 3.6), but the document he describes is quite unlike the Peutinger map; see Salway, ‘Travel, itineraria and tabellaria’ (note 11), 31.

The marble plan of Rome measured 18.3 × 13 m. See Emilio Rodríguez‐Almeida, Formae Urbis Antiquae: Le mappe marmoree di Roma tra la Reppublica e Settimio Severo (Rome, École française de Rome, 2002); see also Liba Taub, ‘The historical function of the “Forma Urbis Romae”’, Imago Mundi 45 (1993): 9–19.

Eumenius, Oratio pro instaurandis scholis, 9(4), in XII Panegyrici Latini, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964), 20.2–21.3. Translation by C. Edward V. Nixon and Barbara S. Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995), 176–77, adapted here by the author.

Alan D. E. Cameron, ‘Petronius Probus, Aemilius Probus and the transmission of Nepos: a note on late Roman calligraphers’ in ‘Humana sapit’: Études d'antiquité tardive offertes à Lellia Cracco Ruggini, ed. Jean‐Michel Carrié and Rita Lizzi Testa (Turnhout, Brepols, 2002), 121–30, at 125–26.

Probus' poem is preserved in the Diuisio orbis terrarum (Geographi Latini Minores), ed. Alexander Riese (Heilbronn, Henninger Brüder, 1878), 19–20); and in Dicuil's Liber de mensura orbis terrae, ed. James J. Tierney (Dublin, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1967), 5.4. Translated here by the author, retaining ‘repara(ui)mus’ of the Diuisio and reading ‘priorum’ for MSS ‘priorem’ in line 10, following Cameron, ‘Petronius Probus, Aemilius Probus and the transmission of Nepos’ (see note 56), 126.

Prontera, ‘La Tabula Peutingeriana nella storia della cartografia antica’ (see note 14).

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS graecus suppl. 1345.5, no 5.

Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (see note 1), 120–22, and idem, ‘Itineraries and geographical maps in the early and later Roman empires’ (see note 13), 249.

Argued in greater detail in Salway, ‘Sea and river travel in the Roman itinerary literature’ (see note 40), 92–95.

Gallazzi and Kramer, ‘Artemidor in Zeichensaal’ (see note 16), 198–202, with Bärbel Kramer and Johannes Kramer, ‘Zwei Korrekturen zu “Iberia, Hispania und das neue Artemidor‐Fragment”’, Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiet 46 (2000): 165; see also Bärbel Kramer, ‘The earliest known map of Spain (?) and the Geography of Artemidorus of Ephesus on papyrus’, Imago Mundi 53 (2001): 115–20, especially Figs. 1 and 2.

But consider Pierre Moret, ‘À propos du papyrus d'Artémidore et de la “plus ancienne carte d'Espagne”’, Mélanges de la Casa de Velasquez n.s. 33 (2003): 350–54, who doubts that the illustration is of a region of Spain.

Kramer, ‘The earliest known map of Spain (?)’ (see note 62), 118, is rightly cautious in identifying the lines as possibly rivers and/or roads.

See note 53.

Salway, ‘Travel, itineraria and tabellaria’ (see note 11), 48–58.

For the Tabellarium Augustodunense, see Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XVII. Miliaria Imperii Romani, 2. Miliaria provinciarum Narbonensis Galliarum Germaniarum, ed. Gerold Walser (Berlin, W. de Gruyter, 1986), 490a–c. For the Tabellarium Tungricanum, see ibid., 675.

For the so‐called stadiasmus provinciae Lyciae, see Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 44 (1994), no. 1205, more fully published in Fahri Isık, Havva İşkan, Nevzat Çevik, Miliarium Lyciae: Patara yol kilavuz anıtı / Das Wegweisermonument von Patara  =  Lykia: anadolu‐akdeniz kültürleri 4 (1998/1999); Salway, ‘Travel, itineraria and tabellaria’ (see note 11), 56–58; C. P. Jones, ‘The Claudian monument at Patara’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 137 (2001): 161–68.

See Salway, ‘Sea and river travel in the Roman itinerary literature’ (see note 40), 77–92.

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Notes on contributors

Benet Salway

Benet Salway is lecturer in ancient history at University College London.