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A subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire ca. 125 AD
- rusanu 9y agoTangential: 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
- xchaotic 9y agoDo 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 9y agoThe 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!
- logingone 9y agoI can't stand these subway maps. I carry a copy of the geographic tube map on my phone. I want to relate the locations to reality, and these subway maps fail to do that. I could possibly go along with a geographic map that changed scale toward the outside, as long as it included contour lines to indicate the reducing scale.
- justinzollars 9y agoflorentia is where its at.
- trynewideas 9y agoSee also Orbis: http://orbis.stanford.edu/ http://orbis.stanford.edu/
- prewett 9y agoUnfortunately, 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 9y agoIt 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...
- sumobob 9y agoordered! Super awesome work, love it! Question: Did you build this programmatically querying Orbis or just drew it by hand?
- _Codemonkeyism 9y agoVery 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 9y agoThat's some coincidence. I'm from about 20 min south of there (Im.). I was surprised to see KE on there.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y agoMeeting on HN :-) Hi! I once had a girlfriend in Sonthofen.
- distances 9y ago20 minutes by foot or horse?
- ponyous 9y agoI feel strangely proud as well. My city never appears on HN, but Poetovio appears on here and it has only 20K people nowadays. In the Roman times, it had an estimated 40k population and it was a military camp IIRC.
- bhaak 9y agoMy hometown of Curia is there as well. Although, doesn't make me especially proud, it has been an uninterrupted population history that starts way before the Romans. :-) Not much of Roman ruins to see nowadays unfortunately.
- aquadrop 9y agoI just recently visited ruins of Tanais (most north-east town on this map) and it was also nice to find it here :) Feeling all that historical connection...
- oskarth 9y agoThis is really neat. It'd be awesome to see famous people's hometown and traveling routes on top of this.
- flukus 9y agoDo the colors represent anything? It feels like they could have continued on in many places.
- rejschaap 9y agoDifferent 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.
- fsiefken 9y agoWhy is Jerusalem not marked? Was the city not big enough at the time?
- Rotten194 9y agoIt 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- minademian 9y agotruly brilliant.
- kybernetikos 9y agoTabula 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/TabulaPeutingeriana.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/TabulaPe... It also has a 'subway' feel, given that not much attention has been paid to getting the shapes correct.
- singularity2001 9y ago"the Greenbelt" amplifying the fact that civilization used to spread more in east-west direction then North-South
- cannam 9y agoAny 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.)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- philippnagel 9y agoSee http://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/talbertdatabase/TPPlace3246.html http://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/talbertdatabase/TPPlace3... and http://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/talbertdatabase/TPPlace2718.html http://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/talbertdatabase/TPPlace2.... Edit: seems to be somewhere within the Iraqi marshlands: http://www.indiana.edu/~nelc/events/documents/Jwaideh/jwaideh_lecture_2007.pdf http://www.indiana.edu/~nelc/events/documents/Jwaideh/jwaide... (back then at least).
- afleck 9y agohttps://www.google.com/maps/@30.3922623,49.233182,10z https://www.google.com/maps/@30.3922623,49.233182,10z I believe it's this.
- freshbob 9y ago
- singularity2001 9y agoVienna seems very off?
- awiesenhofer 9y agoBack then present-day Vienna was called Vindobona, a small fort next to Carnuntum ;)
- vesinisa 9y agoIt 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
- eeks 9y agoMany places in Gallia are off: Vienna is one; Augustodunum is certainly not at the same latitude as Lutetia; Genava is most certainly not south of Lugdunum; etc. Cool map otherwise !
- johan_larson 9y agoIt'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.
- dspillett 9y agoSettlements tended to concentrate along the cost and other water edges, for reasons of food availability, soil fertility, and access to the water base transport you mention. Existing local routes between them would have been used and upgraded as needed rather than building new links except where the time+capital expenditure made it worth while.
- restalis 9y agoSettlements concentrated along the coast were mostly colonies of former naval powers, like Greek states, Phoenicians, and Carthage. These liked to settle close to shore but weren't connected by roads due to political reasons until submission to Rome.
- weberc2 9y agoI'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?
- aqsalose 9y agoI 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.
- 9y ago
- f_allwein 9y agoMight help to add present-day names as well? I found it hard to research some of these on Wikipedia...
- weberc2 9y agoI'm on vacation in Lutetia right now!
- jpdus 9y agoCached Version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TrHiyz4tPV8J:sashat.me/2017/06/03/roman-roads/+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TrHiyz4...
- bshimmin 9y agoUnfortunately that seems to be missing the main bit one would care about, the actual map!
- paraknight 9y agoOutside of the cached version, the map image itself seems to be accessible: https://sashat.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.png https://sashat.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.p... I uploaded it to imgur just in case: https://i.imgur.com/4Ozk1tF.png https://i.imgur.com/4Ozk1tF.png
- folli 9y agoDirect link: http://sashat.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.png http://sashat.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.pn...
- glenneroo 9y agoAlso dead: > The web service to this account has been limited temporarily! This is the link you are looking for: https://sashat.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.png https://sashat.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.p...
- duncans 9y agoCopied the one in my cache to https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV
- gkya 9y agoMaybe it's time when automatic archive links are added in HN. Maybe just below the posted link?
- emiliobumachar 9y ago"The web service to this account has been limited temporarily!" HN hug of death strikes again?
- duncans 9y agohttps://imgur.com/a/VPtUV https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV
- campuscodi 9y agoAny mirrors? The site appears to be down.
- paraknight 9y agoOutside of the cached version, the map image itself seems to be accessible: https://sashat.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.png https://sashat.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Rome_III-01-1.p... I uploaded it to imgur just in case: https://i.imgur.com/4Ozk1tF.png https://i.imgur.com/4Ozk1tF.png
- duncans 9y agohttps://imgur.com/a/VPtUV https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV
- duncans 9y agoMirror of image https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV https://imgur.com/a/VPtUV
- boardmad 9y agoBeing hosted on #HN has killed it
- m_st 9y agoGreat to see the "major" city of Aventicum indirectly mentioned on HN :-) We can still enjoy the amphitheatre for open air concerts and opera.
- vikas5914 9y agoNice
- falsedan 9y ago> 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!
- vinceguidry 9y agoI want to play MiniMetro on this map with Roman chariots instead of subway cars.
- gtrubetskoy 9y agoHere 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 9y agoIt'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?
- KTamasEnty 9y agomirror: https://sashatrubetskoy.github.io/romanmap/ https://sashatrubetskoy.github.io/romanmap/ (mods: can you update the link?)
- mtokunaga 9y agoIt's more like a Highspeed Railway System Map. ;-)
- Akarnani 9y agoASK 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?
- bluetwo 9y agoAnyone else see the basis for a really cool game here?
- jedimastert 9y agoI'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?
- IngoBlechschmid 9y agoDear 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 9y agoSelling 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.
- idlewords 9y agoThe commute is just brutal.
- peter303 9y agoShould do this for the planets in Star Trek Federation.
- peter303 9y agoShould do this for the planets in Star Trek Federation.
- amelius 9y agoWhat 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?