Peutinger Table. The first road map
This is a story really wrapped up. Beginning with his origins, to the innomenables copies, cuts, additions, secrets, discussions. All the ingredients for a good novel.
The map was discovered in a library in the city of Worms by German scholar Conrad Celtes in 1494, who was unable to publish his find before his death and bequeathed the map in 1508 to Konrad Peutinger, a German humanist and antiquarian in Augsburg, after whom the map is named. The Peutinger family kept possession of the map for more than two hundred years until it was sold in 1714. It then bounced between several royal and elite families until it was purchased by Prince Eugene of Savoy for 100 ducats; upon his death in 1737, it was purchased for the Habsburg Imperial Court Library in Vienna (Hofbibliothek). It is today conserved at the Austrian National Library at the Hofburg palace in Vienna.
In 2007, the map was placed on the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, and in recognition of this, it was displayed to the public for a single day on 26 November 2007. Because of its fragile condition, it is not usually on public display.
The Tabula is is a parchment scroll, 0.34 m high and 6.75 m long, and assembled from eleven segments, a maedieval reproduction of the original scroll.
The map shows the Roman road system, an essential part of the Roman cursus publicus. This service was a cornerstone in political and military affairs of Rome as Emperors and dignitaries used it to communicate and to the political centrekeep in Rome and Constantinople posted. Some principal cities are represented by walled spaces, cities are represented by two big houses, towns by one, and some religious temples and sanctuaries are present. But the most eminent features are the personifications of three cities: Rome, Constantinople and Antioch, known as tychai: the fortunes.
- Rome and Constantinople are cities with official and statutory Imperial privileges, Old and New Romes, capita mundi, “capitals of the world” and seats of Imperial power and authority. But on the other hand Antioch, although an important city of the Empire, has not been known for “sharing the purple” with Rome and Constantinople. Milan, Ravenna and Nicomedia could pretend that honour as emperors resided here and there for some years. But not Antioch. Yet on the only surviving map of the Roman Empire the city is as central as Rome and Constantinople. We still try to understand this centrality.
The map was copied for Dutch cartographer Abraham Ortelius and published shortly after his death in 1598. A partial first edition was printed at Antwerp in 1591 (titled Fragmenta tabulæ antiquæ) by Johannes Moretus, who would print the full Tabula in December 1598, also at Antwerp. Johannes Janssonius published another version in Amsterdam, c. 1652.
In 1753 Franz Christoph von Scheyb published a copy, and in 1872 Konrad Miller, a German professor, was allowed to copy the map. Several publishing houses in Europe then made copies. In 1892 publishers Williams and Norgate published a copy in London, and in 1911 a sheet was added showing the reconstructed sections of the British Isles and the Iberian peninsula missing in the original.
From Agrippa to Ortelius
Explanation on the version of Abraham Ortelius and Konrad Peutinger tabula. Title: Tabula Itineraria Ex Illustri Peutingerorum Biblitheca Quae Augustae Vindel. Est Beneficio Marci Velseri Septemviri Augustani In Lucem Edita. Antwer 1598.
Though it is not entirely certain, the Peutinger Table is generally thought to be a surviving copy of a map created under the direction of the Roman architect and general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa near the start of the first millennium. Agrippa was a good friend to the emperor Augustus, and when Agrippa died in 12 B.C. Augustus (along with Agrippa’s sister) had the original map engraved in marble and displayed in the Porticus Vipsania in the Campus Agrippae, an area of Rome named in honor of the architect.
The American historian Glen Bowersock supports this dating, based particularly on details of Roman Arabia found on the map that are inconsistent with a later creation date. Another important detail is the Roman town of Pompeii (Pompeis), near modern-day Naples, which was famously destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. and never rebuilt. Its inclusion on the map indicates that the original was created before Pompeii’s destruction.
- Olivia Sara Carli, and Annalina and Mario Levi have shown that the Tabula is an accumulative work that was updated on different occasions and with large intervals of time. Thus the map is constructed throughout the centuries with important revisions.
However, there are also details suggesting a revision of the map in the fifth century, such as the inclusion of Constantinople, which was founded in 328, and of Ravenna, seat of the Western Roman Empire from 402 to 476. The presence of certain cities of Germania Inferior that were destroyed in the mid-fifth century also indicates the map’s latest likely creation date.
This revised version was copied onto parchment in the thirteenth century and is the oldest surviving copy today. It was found in a library in Augsburg by Konrad Celtes, who left it to the collector Konrad Peutinger, whose name it now bears. After his death, it went to Peutinger’s relative Marcus Welser. After this, the map was passed down within the Welser family, largely lost from view, until 1714, when it was recovered and now it is one of the treasures of the Vienna National Library. This surviving manuscript is damaged and lacking the first sheet, showing the Iberian Peninsula and Britain.
Source: Austrian National Library
Welser sent new manuscript copies of the Peutinger example to Ortelius in 1598 at Ortelius’ request. This is why Welser is subsequently honored in this copy’s cartouche. Welser was actually the first to publish a printed version of the Peutinger Table, in Venice in 1591. However, Ortelius was displeased with the quality of the engraving and desired to improve it. He had been interested in the Peutinger Table for at least twenty years by the 1590s, and he used these accurate manuscript copies to create his own beautifully-rendered version, an ambitious project. When joined, the eight strips shown on the map stretch approximately four meters (about 13.3 feet) long. This was one of Ortelius’ last projects. He oversaw the engraving until his death in 1598.
The Ortelius Peutinger was published separately by Moretus in 1598. Bertius also included the prints in Theatrum Geographiæ Veteris in 1619. It then appeared in the 1624 edition of Ortelius Parergon. This atlas of the ancient world was a project of great personal interest and the work that Ortelius himself considered his greatest achievement. The 1624 edition was one of the only Parergon editions to be published completely separately from his modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. It was highly successful as indicated by its continued printing 26 years after Ortelius’ death.
Ortelius’ work on the Peutinger Table is masterful, and the detail present shows his skill and dedication to accurate historical representation. The original Peutinger Table, now residing in the Vienna National Library, is heavily damaged. Therefore, Ortelius’s four-sheet engraving is generally considered to be the best surviving and one of the earliest obtainable representations of the original Roman map.
Other source:
Austrian National Library, permalink.
