7 ms·

A Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire

203 points by adamcarson 12y ago

walterbell 12y ago
Is this using/sharing data with http://pleiades.stoa.org/ http://pleiades.stoa.org/? Edit: found a diagram that shows Pleiades supplying data to the Pelagios API used by this atlas: http://bsa.biblio.univ-lille3.fr/doc/gawd/gawd.html http://bsa.biblio.univ-lille3.fr/doc/gawd/gawd.html
- walterbell 12y ago
  From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8113410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8113410 there was a Google Maps mashup of Wikipedia people/event dates & locations. You can filter by date, location, entity type: https://retred.org https://retred.org (time slider at top of page, filters at the bottom).
fiorix 12y ago
This is awesome
jpeg_hero 12y ago
This is why the web was made. Full fulling the promise of knowledge for all.
Svip 12y ago
Something I've noticed, there doesn't appear to be any roads in Greece. Is this because the Romans didn't build any roads there and just used the Greek roads? If that's the case, then why aren't those roads on the map? I sincerely doubt all transport in Greece was done by ship.
- hayksaakian 12y ago
  Missing data I presume?
  - bloat 12y ago
    I also couldn't see the little Gaulish village we know so well.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  Well, there are some relevant "stylized facts" about Greece... - Greece has lots and lots of coastline - The interior of Greece is largely mountains So you'd be crazy to transport anything over land in Greece if you had the option of using water. That said, I'm sure there were some roads.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - NAFV_P 12y ago
    To add to the logistical difficulties, ancient Greece was covered in thick forest.
  - davidweir 12y ago
    Transporting goods inland was hard because no way had yet been found to use horses to provide motive power without strangling them, hence "It remained cheaper to transport heavy goods in bulk from one end of the Mediterranean to the other than to haul them without a river-way for seventy miles inland." Source: The Classical World, by Robin Lane Fox http://books.google.com/books?id=nqKpSKq0v6oC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22the%20classical%20world%22&pg=PT172#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=nqKpSKq0v6oC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22...
    - wnewman 12y ago
      "Transporting goods inland was hard because..." I think it should be something like "was even harder than you would think because..." Sure it was harder before efficient harnesses, but even after efficient harnesses were invented, indeed even in good terrain, horses and carts were very expensive. Note that not only were railroads and trucks a lasting revolution in commerce, they were a radical improvement on another (less enduring) radical improvement before that, extensive artificial canals (very famously the Erie Canal, but there were many others, some successful). Rivers and canals were central to inland commerce in Europe and America because even with good harnesses, enthusiastic breeding of suitable strains of horses, and various other refinements horses and carts are still expensive per ton per mile.
    - 12y ago
- antman 12y ago
  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Egnatia http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Egnatia Large roads were used for government purposes and private citizens had to get a permit. Commerce was conducted through shipping mostly. When Egyptian grain stopped, Thracian regions supported Rome so the roads in northern Greece improved. But that was right before the end...
davidw 12y ago
It's interesting how empty northern Italy is compared to the center. If you look at where I am in "Patavium", there are just a few towns around, and not much else, but even off in the Marche, it's dotted with quite a few places. It does seem to be missing the 'graticolato Romano' to the east of Padova, though, which is still quite visible on maps today: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Padua,+Italy/@45.5036786,12.0850511,12z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x477eda5841ab30cf:0xc18236edaa1a2e2c https://www.google.com/maps/place/Padua,+Italy/@45.5036786,1... - it's the very regularly spaced grid in the middle of the map. The land was divided up to be given to ex-soldiers to colonize.
- huxley 12y ago
  The process of creating the grid was called Centuriation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuriation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuriation
hrasyid 12y ago
500 Internal Server Error ? Is there any cached version out there?
CatsoCatsoCatso 12y ago
Another fantastic historical interactive map: http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/russianempire http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/russianempire These must take a fair amount of time to put together.
- NAFV_P 12y ago
  I found one posted on HN a few years ago of Middle Earth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1681505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1681505 EDIT: and another https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4972756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4972756
mxfh 12y ago
For navigation and other uses there is also this geospatial model of the Roman Empire: http://orbis.stanford.edu/ http://orbis.stanford.edu/
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
seszett 12y ago
That's great, but it would be even better with Roman-era terrain instead of modern terrain. In my place a 1000-km² or so area was at the time a sea dotted with islands, so seeing it as sea on the map would make it more obvious why the place is devoid of roman roads.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  Yeah, and Roma was a port and the sea was way closer to the city at the time, as far as I recall.
  - falsestprophet 12y ago
    Ostia Antica [1], was ancient Rome's harbor 19 miles southwest of the city [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostia_Antica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostia_Antica
- markbnj 12y ago
  Is there a reliable source for Roman-era terrain? Obviously some of it is known, but could we make a reliable map? Anyway, this is a great visualization resource. Really well done.
contingencies 12y ago
How I wish I'd had this while studying Latin, or while traveling in Tunisia! Anyone traveling Europe with an interest in history could probably benefit from this.
kitwalker12 12y ago
where is the small village of indomitable Gauls
sbmassey 12y ago
It would be nice to narrow the timescale down a bit from just Roman era. Or, better still, to be able to look at how it changes over time.
crapshoot101 12y ago
So cool. If anyone is interested, I've spent the summer going through "The History of Rome" podcast from Mike Duncan (http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/), and even as someone who thought he knew a little bit about Roman history, its been fascinating - ie, we're just getting to the end of Caesar's reign, and we spent as much time on the Tarquins' as we did on Ceasar. I've heard great things about Dan Carlin, but I wanted to start from the beginning.

203 points by adamcarson 12y ago

Is this using/sharing data with http://pleiades.stoa.org/ http://pleiades.stoa.org/? Edit: found a diagram that shows Pleiades supplying data to the Pelagios API used by this atlas: http://bsa.biblio.univ-lille3.fr/doc/gawd/gawd.html http://bsa.biblio.univ-lille3.fr/doc/gawd/gawd.html

walterbell 12y ago
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8113410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8113410 there was a Google Maps mashup of Wikipedia people/event dates & locations. You can filter by date, location, entity type: https://retred.org https://retred.org (time slider at top of page, filters at the bottom).

fiorix 12y ago

This is awesome

jpeg_hero 12y ago

This is why the web was made. Full fulling the promise of knowledge for all.

Svip 12y ago

Something I've noticed, there doesn't appear to be any roads in Greece. Is this because the Romans didn't build any roads there and just used the Greek roads? If that's the case, then why aren't those roads on the map? I sincerely doubt all transport in Greece was done by ship.

hayksaakian 12y ago
Missing data I presume?
- bloat 12y ago
  I also couldn't see the little Gaulish village we know so well.
thaumasiotes 12y ago
Well, there are some relevant "stylized facts" about Greece... - Greece has lots and lots of coastline - The interior of Greece is largely mountains So you'd be crazy to transport anything over land in Greece if you had the option of using water. That said, I'm sure there were some roads.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- NAFV_P 12y ago
  To add to the logistical difficulties, ancient Greece was covered in thick forest.
- davidweir 12y ago
  Transporting goods inland was hard because no way had yet been found to use horses to provide motive power without strangling them, hence "It remained cheaper to transport heavy goods in bulk from one end of the Mediterranean to the other than to haul them without a river-way for seventy miles inland." Source: The Classical World, by Robin Lane Fox http://books.google.com/books?id=nqKpSKq0v6oC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22the%20classical%20world%22&pg=PT172#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=nqKpSKq0v6oC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22...
  - wnewman 12y ago
    "Transporting goods inland was hard because..." I think it should be something like "was even harder than you would think because..." Sure it was harder before efficient harnesses, but even after efficient harnesses were invented, indeed even in good terrain, horses and carts were very expensive. Note that not only were railroads and trucks a lasting revolution in commerce, they were a radical improvement on another (less enduring) radical improvement before that, extensive artificial canals (very famously the Erie Canal, but there were many others, some successful). Rivers and canals were central to inland commerce in Europe and America because even with good harnesses, enthusiastic breeding of suitable strains of horses, and various other refinements horses and carts are still expensive per ton per mile.
  - 12y ago
antman 12y ago
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Egnatia http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Egnatia Large roads were used for government purposes and private citizens had to get a permit. Commerce was conducted through shipping mostly. When Egyptian grain stopped, Thracian regions supported Rome so the roads in northern Greece improved. But that was right before the end...

davidw 12y ago

It's interesting how empty northern Italy is compared to the center. If you look at where I am in "Patavium", there are just a few towns around, and not much else, but even off in the Marche, it's dotted with quite a few places. It does seem to be missing the 'graticolato Romano' to the east of Padova, though, which is still quite visible on maps today: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Padua,+Italy/@45.5036786,12.0850511,12z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x477eda5841ab30cf:0xc18236edaa1a2e2c https://www.google.com/maps/place/Padua,+Italy/@45.5036786,1... - it's the very regularly spaced grid in the middle of the map. The land was divided up to be given to ex-soldiers to colonize.

huxley 12y ago
The process of creating the grid was called Centuriation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuriation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuriation

hrasyid 12y ago

500 Internal Server Error ? Is there any cached version out there?

CatsoCatsoCatso 12y ago

Another fantastic historical interactive map: http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/russianempire http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/russianempire These must take a fair amount of time to put together.

NAFV_P 12y ago
I found one posted on HN a few years ago of Middle Earth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1681505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1681505 EDIT: and another https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4972756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4972756

mxfh 12y ago

For navigation and other uses there is also this geospatial model of the Roman Empire: http://orbis.stanford.edu/ http://orbis.stanford.edu/

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

seszett 12y ago

That's great, but it would be even better with Roman-era terrain instead of modern terrain. In my place a 1000-km² or so area was at the time a sea dotted with islands, so seeing it as sea on the map would make it more obvious why the place is devoid of roman roads.

ekianjo 12y ago
Yeah, and Roma was a port and the sea was way closer to the city at the time, as far as I recall.
- falsestprophet 12y ago
  Ostia Antica [1], was ancient Rome's harbor 19 miles southwest of the city [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostia_Antica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostia_Antica
markbnj 12y ago
Is there a reliable source for Roman-era terrain? Obviously some of it is known, but could we make a reliable map? Anyway, this is a great visualization resource. Really well done.

contingencies 12y ago

How I wish I'd had this while studying Latin, or while traveling in Tunisia! Anyone traveling Europe with an interest in history could probably benefit from this.

kitwalker12 12y ago

where is the small village of indomitable Gauls

sbmassey 12y ago

It would be nice to narrow the timescale down a bit from just Roman era. Or, better still, to be able to look at how it changes over time.

crapshoot101 12y ago

So cool. If anyone is interested, I've spent the summer going through "The History of Rome" podcast from Mike Duncan (http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/), and even as someone who thought he knew a little bit about Roman history, its been fascinating - ie, we're just getting to the end of Caesar's reign, and we spent as much time on the Tarquins' as we did on Ceasar. I've heard great things about Dan Carlin, but I wanted to start from the beginning.