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Maps of the Roman Empire
- chris_mahan 12y agoError on the legend on the map of the Rise of Constantine (section 31). The campaign against Maxentius should read 312, not 212.
- binarybits 12y agoGreat eye. Will fix. Thanks.
- chris_mahan 12y agoNo problem! Thank you, that page is interesting.
- peckrob 12y agoThe Roman Kingdom/Republic/Empire is a really fascinating period of ancient history. What's really mindblowing is when you realize that the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire didn't fall until 1453. If you're looking for interesting listening on Rome, I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History Podcast. The series Death Throes of the Republic focuses on the period where Rome transformed from a Republic to an Empire (maps 13-16). I just finished listening to that a few weeks ago, and it was amazing. Additionally, Thor's Hammer discusses what happened in Europe when Rome fell. There's also an older series on the Punic wars, but I haven't had a chance to listen to that one yet.
- Arelius 12y agoI'll second Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. The frequency of his podcast is pretty long, but it's worth the wait.
- peckrob 12y agoYeah, they're really closer to an audio book series than a podcast at this point, but perfect for long road trips.
- smacktoward 12y agoAnother good podcast on the subject is Lars Brownworth's 12 Byzantine Rulers (http://12byzantinerulers.com/ http://12byzantinerulers.com/), which starts with the Roman emperor Diocletian and proceeds through the founding of Constantinople, the fall of the western empire, and the evolution of the eastern empire over the 1,000 years that followed.
- peapicker 12y agoI'll second that, Mr. Brownworth's podcast is excellent, highly recommended.
- JackFr 12y agoAlso by Lars -- Norman Centuries -- fascinating account of how Vikings ended up ruling Britain, Normandy, Sicily and leading crusades. http://normancenturies.com/ http://normancenturies.com/
- acheron 12y agoHe wrote a book on the eastern "Byzantine" empire as well, Lost to the West, which covers some of the same ground as the podcast series but plenty of other material as well.
- VLM 12y agoThe 12 byzantine rulers podcast led more or less directly to the history of rome podcast http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ Beware, its an investment of perhaps 200 hours? Mike Duncan has since moved on to Revolutions and is currently in the beginning of the French revolution. Don't let that slow you down, its not like the history of rome is going to change much in the near future. Then "the history of rome" podcast begat "the history of byzantium" podcast. Another investment in time which isn't nearly done yet. There is also the British History podcast which is pretty good listening and technically on topic as it was partially part of the roman empire for a good while. Another work in progress. (And I see sspiff and I posted within seconds of each other. Well, great minds think alike and all that...)
- cesarbs 12y agoI love reading the book of Acts in the Bible because it relates their travels within a part of the Roman empire. What strikes me is how similar to modern day traveling it seemed to be, just in longer timescales. But the same way we could say today "I'll catch a plane to Madrid and from there I will proceed to Paris", you read there about people taking ships and then traveling on foot to other locations as if it weren't such a huge deal i.e. not as if they were saying "I'm embarking on this long journey to the end of the world, farewell!" I guess we could say the part of the world covered by the empire was quite "globalized" at that time, in a sense.
- ajlburke 12y agoChristianity wouldn't have spread nearly as quickly or as far if it hadn't been able to piggyback on the Roman Empire's infrastructure. On the flip side, after Rome's political influence left most of Europe, the parallel church structure was still there to help maintain civilization at least a little bit during the barbarian invasions and general collapse. [Leaving out Mithraism, which also spread in similar ways, as well as any discussion of what exactly constitutes "barbarian" vs. "civilization" since it gets fuzzier the closer you look.]
- acqq 12y agoThe soldiers across the Empire came from all the imaginable parts of it. Going through the museums in Europe near to the former Roman camps, I've seen the statues of Egyptian gods brought or made by Egyptian-born soldiers or artisans, found between the statues of Mithra.
- zyxley 12y agoThe Pax Romana was probably a big part of that. During that time a person could reasonably expect to travel through most of the Roman Empire without running into anything worse than local thieves and without having to deal with national borders. Both before and after that time period in Western Europe, in contrast, any long-distance travel was likely to run into wars of expansion or civil wars, local warlords, or so on.
- nicholasjon 12y agoJust finishing up the Fall of the Roman Republic now, it's a fantastic series and podcast. Unrelated to Rome: Dan Carlin's Hardcore History series on the Mongols is equally awesome. http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hh http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hh
- josephschmoe 12y agoHow connected were the Eastern Romans to the original western ones though? Would you say it's like the U.S. and Britain, more distinct or less?
- VLM 12y agoMore like north and south carolina, at least until things went sharply downhill for the western half. Or perhaps a better analogy is its almost exactly like the U.P. of Michigan vs the mitten of Michigan (lower michigan?) One problem with discussing how close two political orgs are over two thousand years is times change. Relations definitely had their ups and downs over the whole course of time. At times the religious strife between west and east was a little fiercer than anything that happened between US and Britain, at least post-1812. (edited to add in a really good familiar analogy, at least some of the time ... Britain and Ireland)
- hollerith 12y agoSince Latin was the language of the western empire, but Greek the language of the eastern empire, I'd say that the two halves were more distinct that the U.S. and the U.K. are.
- vondur 12y agoBy the medieval period, vastly different. There are stories about when the nobles of the first Crusade visited Constantinople they were thinking how much different the Emperors of the East were compared to what they knew of the old Roman Empire. As mentioned before the East was always different from the Western empire, but they really drifted apart in the 400's.
- smacktoward 12y agoMore distinct, definitely. But the interesting bit is that they themselves would never have recognized this. Walk up to someone calling themselves "Roman" in 1 AD and you could find yourself talking to a pagan born in modern Italy who spoke Latin. Walk up to someone calling themselves "Roman" 500 years later and you could be talking to a Christian born in modern Turkey who spoke Greek, which is a very very different person. But both of them would have insisted that they were "Roman." (The idea of "Byzantium" itself as something distinct from the Roman Empire is a purely modern construction -- no Byzantine would have conceived of themselves as such.) So the idea of "Romanness" was socially constructed; it meant whatever people living in the empire at a particular time collectively decided it meant. You can see a similar type of socially constructed identity by looking at "whiteness" in American culture. 150 years ago, a "white American" was strictly interpreted as a person of northern European ("Anglo-Saxon") descent. English, French, Germans and Scandinavians were "white people"; Spaniards, Italians, Irish, Poles, Russians and Jews were not. But fast-forward to today, and all those latter ethnicities are now commonly identified as "white" in American culture. In other words, whiteness, like Romanness, is less a fixed identifier of a particular ethnic/religious/linguistic configuration and more a convenient way for people to divide the world into in-groups and out-groups, "us" and "them."
- sspiff 12y agoSome other great resources: 1. Mike Duncan's "history of Rome" covers the first 1000 years (http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/) 2. Robin Pierson's "history of Byzantium" covers the final 1000 years (http://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/ http://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/)
- nickik 12y agoHolly shit a podcast about Byzantium I dont know, how is this possible. Thank you.
- Kiro 12y agoDeath Throes of the Republic is my favorite podcast series ever and I've listened to a lot (having a braindead job where I would get away with just staring into a screen listening to podcasts all day long).
- vijayr 12y agoThere is this TV show "Ancient Impossible" which showcases all kinds of awesome things that people built thousands of years ago. The achievements of Romans (along with Egyptians) are the most awe inspiring
- DanBC 12y agoThe book "Ancient Inventions (Wonders of the Past)" is pretty good discussion of what ancient civilisations achieved. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Inventions-Wonders-Peter-James/dp/1854797778/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408547620&sr=8-1&keywords=ancient+inventions http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Inventions-Wonders-Peter-Jam...
- pi-err 12y agoThose maps are good - yet they don't explain the Roman Empire. It's actually tricky to explain the Empire. Over 7 centuries without _any_ significant technological progress. A political regime that is as archaic as its borders are vast - and it drove Europe's political agenda up until the 19th century. It's possibly the most successful and devastating face of the plutocracy. When the Empire faded away in the 4-7th century, contemporary archaelogy now thinks that people's life actually improved. The tax and ideological burden of the roman overhead was a toll on entire societies.
- walterbell 12y agoR.A. Lafferty's The Fall of Rome discusses the role of Goths, http://sentent.blogspot.com/2010/05/r-lafferty-and-semitic-germans-of-300.html http://sentent.blogspot.com/2010/05/r-lafferty-and-semitic-g..., "One of the odder notions that he put into the book was the idea that the Balti, the leading clan of the Visigoths, were not originally from Germania but were aliens to northern Europe."
- ManFromUranus 12y agoWhat about roman concrete, I heard they also had the steam engine, but steam technology was regarded as useless because of the abundance of slaves. Wikipedia seems to indicate that they were responsible for a number of technological advancements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology
- chipsy 12y agoThe Romans did have some interesting technology, but one of the things to notice about it is that the highlights are all "imperial" biased: Sturdy roads, aqueducts, buildings, and military equipment are basically the things you want to have in order to consolidate and maintain power over a large area for a long period of time. One historiographical stance to take is that, rather than being a deterministic progression like a game of Civilization, a group of people can become trapped within a locally-optimal set of technologies and their attention diverted ("bread and circuses") from other possible breakthroughs while the political leaders squabble for control. In contrast, technologies like the printing press have subversive uses and tie in directly to the political changes of the Renaissance.
- yincrash 12y agoHank Green and friends produced a lovely set of videos that quickly and humorously go through the basics of the Roman Empire (among other things). It's part of a playlist on the Crash Course YouTube channel on World History. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPf27gAup9U&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9&index=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPf27gAup9U&list=PLBDA2E52FB...
- yincrash 12y agoOops! I meant John Green! Hank is his brother.
- therealdrag0 12y agoI'm listening to an audiobook of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, so this'll be a great companion.
- damontal 12y agoIs it the one narrated by Bernard Mayes? I had a really hard time listening to that one because his voice is so unmodulated and relaxing that my thoughts would frequently wander or I'd fall asleep.
- _random_ 12y ago"Traveling around the empire was excruciatingly slow" "The researchers estimate that it took 7 weeks to travel from Constantinople (at the eastern end of the empire) to London (in the far west)." What a funny little empire with nice roads :). Check this empire: "And say, the governor went to Yakutsk, not months, for three years. The first year we reach Tobolsk. The second - to Irkutsk. And in the third year of riding on horseback to the upper reaches of the Lena and floated with water to Yakutsk." https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Tobolsk,+Tyumen+Oblast,+Russia/Irkutsk+Oblast,+Russia/Yakutsk,+Sakha+Republic,+Russia https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Tobolsk,+Tyumen+Oblast,+Ru... http://www.e-reading.ws/chapter.php/142600/90/Burovskiii_-_Pravda_o__zolotom_veke__Ekateriny.html http://www.e-reading.ws/chapter.php/142600/90/Burovskiii_-_P...
- 100timesthis 12y agothat's a lot of cold empty land! the roman empire was with a large and variegated population.
- sspiff 12y agoSome remarks: 1. Mercator projection gives Russian empires an unfair advantage. 2. The Romans ruled over arguably the best lands in the known world at that time, and a much larger part of the world population. Russia ruled/rules over vast empire of vast forests, inhospitable steppes and empty tundra, sprinkled with a few good spots and a few people. 3. Inefficient travel doesn't make a great empire. That's not to say the Russian empire wasn't huge, or didn't have a lot of people, or wasn't powerful. It was the largest power pre-World War 1, and its remnant is still a major player. I just wasn't as important or dominant or influential or long lived as the Roman empire was.
- afterburner 12y agoOver 1500 years later? Come on. If you want size, and the 19th century, how about this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/The_British_Empire.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/The_Briti...
- nhebb 12y agoThat's an extreme example, but really traveling anywhere before modern transportation was slow. I remember from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography that it took him two weeks just to travel from Boston to Philadelphia. And IIRC, he went by sea and almost drowned in a ship wreck along the way.
- matthewbauer 12y agoIf you're interested in ancient maps, I've found that Geacron[1] very cool. It allows you to see a world map from any year since 3000 BC (of course with varying accuracy). [1]: http://geacron.com/home-en/ http://geacron.com/home-en/
- joeyspn 12y agoNice one, but I prefer this gif about the decadence of the Spanish Empire... the end is quite funny. http://oi58.tinypic.com/sbhoac.jpg http://oi58.tinypic.com/sbhoac.jpg
- eru 12y agoThat's a strange URL for a gif.
- GregorStocks 12y agoThat's fairly common. For example, hello.jpg (of goatse fame) is a gif as well.
- vacri 12y agoThe end is funny, but the start is wrong. In 1581, Brazil was Portuguese, due to the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494. It's why Brazil speaks Portuguese instead of Spanish like the rest of Latin America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas
- ableal 12y agoTrue, but the animation is correct: because of a messed up succession, all of Portugal belonged to the Spanish crown from 1580 to 1640 - Felipe II of Spain was Filipe I of Portugal (followed by III/II and IV/III). In 1640 Portugal fought for independence, and got a new dynasty going. That's shown in the sequence, Brazil popping out is noticeable ...
- vacri 12y agoI stand corrected - I missed seeing Portugal itself painted red.
- sspiff 12y agoA great summary, but I find it annoying people always only mention the Eastern Roman Empire in passing or as a footnote. It was a continuation of the Roman Empire in every way. They were called "the Roman empire" or "romans" by themselves and the rest of the world. And they lasted another 1000 years, many of those as the dominant regional power, bringing the total lifetime of the Roman state up to a staggering 2181 years.
- binarybits 12y agoI agree with you in general, but I had to pick some limits to make the piece manageable. Perhaps I'll do 40 maps on the Byzantines at some point in the future.
- sspiff 12y agoI understand, and as I said earlier, it's a great summary, especially considering how much you managed to cram into it while keeping it easy to digest.
- vorg 12y agoThe Greek-speakers of the East kept on speaking Greek after they were folded into the Roman political model, and kept many of their other cultural and economic institutions, rather than being dragged off as slaves. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that Greek civilization lasted from 776 BC to 1453 AD, under various political models. A co-operative system born from the hilly Greek peninsular and jagged Aegean coastlines meeting the hierarchical system of the Romans co-existing.
- sspiff 12y agoThe Roman culture was - for a very significant part - a carbon copy of the Greek. So in a sense, the Romans continued the Greek culture as much as they succeeded it. I realize that the there are significant differences in the ancient Greek political model, and the Greek and Roman culture, and that the Eastern Roman Empire was for most of its lifetime Greek speaking. But it was still a continuous evolution of the Roman Empire, even if it tilted more towards Greek influences most of the time. In a sense, you could indeed say the Greeks persisted for the entire era, as they had some form of local self-governance etc during the Roman era, and they dominated Roman politics for the last half of their empire.
- NickWarner775 12y agoVery interested. shows an easy to understand history lesson with great visuals.
- jebblue 12y agoI looked at the map overlaying the US to contrast the relative size of the Roman Empire. I think it might be shown a bit bigger than it was. We vacationed in France and Rome and took a train overnight between them. That train had a ton of stops. I'm pretty sure that even without the stops, it would take longer than a night to travel by rail from approximately Montana (where France would roughly be) to the south-eastern Gulf Coast region (Italy). Edit: Checking Google maps and more maps on the OP page I think I mis-calculated Italy's position in the purple blob, it would probably be around where Kansas is.
- binarybits 12y agoItaly is over Wyoming. I think you're confusing it with Egypt, which is in the lower-right of the map.
- keyle 12y agoI wish we had such course in school. I may have paid more attention! Fantastic use of contextual imagery with digestible content.
- MrBra 12y agoExcellent and neatly packaged source of information. It would be great to have it translated into other languages.. I know so many people who would love to access this content but do not speak english.. How should I proceed to offer myself for voluntary translation?
- nsajko 12y agoThe map cdn1.vox-cdn.com/assets/4822180/roman_civil_war.jpg seems to have mixed up labels for Roman Provinces and Client Kingdoms. I feel that about half instances of the word barbaric shouldn't have been used in the article. Also I don't see why unverifiable claims like 'Charlemagne persuaded the Pope to crown him' had to be used. Nice, informative work besides that.
- dmix 12y agoFor #9, if you'd like to see the tactical differences between Phalanx vs Maniple battle formations, someone made a game simulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPq9sIOsuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJPq9sIOsuE
- jamesash 12y agoListening to the audiobook of The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar is rich in detail and really grabs you by the throat. The classically trained narrator is superb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snft290-FRc&list=PLpO7W_VntCvOR4RdjL2zhY6cnNJBYBPN0&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snft290-FRc&list=PLpO7W_VntC...
- m_mueller 12y agoLately I've become somewhat addicted to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcasts. His episodes about the Punic wars can be purchased here: http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1 http://dancarlin.com/dccart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=...
- laichzeit0 12y agoIf you're interested in this type of thing, be sure to check out the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World [1]. I have a copy, and while it is expensive, it is simple _amazing_. I read Caesar's Gallic Wars again and followed the movements of the army using that book and it was an intellectual orgasm of note. I'll never read a military history book again without a detailed map, it completely changes the appreciation of it. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Atlas_of_the_Greek_and_Roman_World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Atlas_of_the_Greek_a...
- rullopat 12y agoI can easily say that, if we have civilization, we can thank the Romans. Besides many things that they invented or "just" improved there were: - Aqueducts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_aqueduct - Roads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads In Italy, the SS1 (Strada Statale 1, that means, State Road #1), is the "evolution" of the Via Aurelia, built by Romans in the year 241 BC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Aurelia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Aurelia But then the Barbarians from Northern Europe came...
- pjmlp 12y ago> But then the Barbarians from Northern Europe came... Sometimes I wonder how things would have been if that didn't happen. So much technology that was lost, only to be re-discovered centuries later.
- denizozger 12y agoIndeed those few centuries after Roman Empire collapses is a great example of human race not (necessarily) advancing as time passes.
- contingencies 12y agoI studied Latin and drank the koolaid, but recently read a book about early France which seemed to dispute the commonly held view that the Romans introduced everything technology wise. Bridges, roads and communication were certainly high on the list of "had it beforehand". It even has evidence to suggest that they had a sophisticated pre-internet decentralized voice communications network that operated by shouting down relatively quiet valleys. A review at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10372050/The-Ancient-Paths-Discovering-the-Lost-Map-of-Celtic-Europe-review.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/1037205... Western-centric histories also frequently forget the hugely significant contributions of Al-Andalus (Moorish Spain), Persia, India and China. Paper was pretty high up there on the list of civilizing factors, and it sure as hell wasn't Roman or northern European! Lenses came from Assyria. Lots of maths the Romans used came from Greece, and the Greeks were present in France before the Romans got there. Caesar himself wrote: The Celts do have writing: They use written Greek for both public and private transactions. But it is not lawful to commit either their rules or religion to writing. Thus, one could argue that the true innovation introduced by Romans may have been the liberation of the formerly slave-like commonfolk to glorious Roman pantheism and literary freedom!
- markbnj 12y agoA great page and very interesting light reading on the topic, however a rather loose definition of 'map' is in play.
- mcguire 12y agoIt's almost entirely unrelated, but if anyone's interested I would like to plug my current favorite history book: Phillip Sabin's Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World. It uses a simple tactical (board) wargame system to explore ancient battles including several from the rise of the Roman Republic and Empire.