Rome's World
The Peutinger Map Reconsidered

A long-overdue reinterpretation and appreciation of the Peutinger Map as a masterpiece both of mapmaking and imperial Roman ideology.

Richard J. A. Talbert (Author)

9780521764803, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 August 2010

376 pages, 33 b/w illus. 1 table
26.2 x 18.6 x 2.6 cm, 0.84 kg

'… deserves our gratitude for having made the TP [Peutinger Map] digitally accessible to the scholarly community and for having provided a detailed commentary.' Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists

The Peutinger Map is the only map of the Roman world to come down to us from antiquity. Today it is among the treasures of the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Richard Talbert's study presented in Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered offers a long-overdue reinterpretation and appreciation of the map as a masterpiece of both mapmaking and imperial Roman ideology. Here, the ancient world's traditional span, from the Atlantic to India, is dramatically remolded; lands and routes take pride of place, whereas seas are compressed. Talbert posits that the map's true purpose was not to assist travelers along Rome's highways, but rather to celebrate the restoration of peace and order by Diocletian's Tetrarchy. Such creative cartography, he shows, influenced the development of medieval mapmaking. With the aid of digital technology, this book enables readers to engage with the Peutinger Map in all of its fascinating immensity more closely than ever before.

Introduction
1. The surviving copy: history, publication, scholarship
2. The surviving copy: the material object and its palaeography
3. Design and character of the map
4. Recovery of the original map from the surviving copy
5. The original map
Conclusion: the map's place in classical and medieval cartography.

Subject Areas: Cartography, map-making & projections [RGV], Geographical discovery & exploration [RGR], Historical maps & atlases [HBTP1], Historical geography [HBTP], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]