Archaeologists find western world\'s oldest map

[floofthegoof]

When this map was made, Rome was throwing out the Tarquins and creating the republic. I wonder if the makers of the map took any notice of it. I wonder in what manner rumors circulated regarding political upheavals in other towns.

[tlclark]

Just had to get into this discussion since it relates to my dissertation.

If this map is genuinely a spatial map it's a VERY big deal. When most people think of geographies, they think of maps, but in the ancient world nearly all ancient geographies have no actual maps, or no evidence that they ever had maps. Instead what they provided were long lists ( literally "katalogia" ) of coordinates and distances.

In theory, anyone with a copy of Ptolemy's Geographica could draw an accurate map based on Ptolemy's tables.

What's funny is that there is far more evidence for actual star maps in antiquity than for maps of the earth. In a way, that's natural. The sky is easy to see, it's much harder to see and map the earth from the ground!

Whether claudius ptolemy had an actual map to work from or not is still a matter of huge debate. Personally I think that he only had rudimentary drawings if anything. It's obvious that he was working from a system of coordinates. Whenever you see a "map" from Ptlomey or Strabo it is actually medieval or later in origin.

There is a huge shift in perceptual thinking from the ancient world to the Medieval. Scientific illustration, or any diagrams of any kind are virtually unknown, but then something happens, and then there are maps literally everywhere.

Finding the moment when this happens is something of a holy grail of mine. My own take on this is that Cosmas Indicopleustes' Christian Topography, is far more critical in the mind-shift than previously thought.

Travis

[Praefectusclassis]

Ahhh! Travis, your subject may be relevant for my dissertation, since understanding of the world is kinda essential for any type of strategic reconstruction. I guess you are quite of the same mindset as Mattern?

[tlclark]

Gosh I don't know!

I touched on Mattern a year ago when I was writing the dissertation proposal and I haven't looked at it since. Mattern isn't dealing with the material visual culture from the angle of art history though, so I don't honestly know how well I line up with her.

What does she say about the lack of true Roman maps and the Roman Worldview?

In terms of visual culture, which means literal physical images, there is precious little evidence for anything we would recognize as a map in the ancient world. They simply aren't thinking conceptual in visual terms for maps, or if they are, putting them down in solid form is just irrelevant. I mean the first illustrated version of Vitruvius isn't until the 16th C. and yet architecture is decidely VISUAL stuff. We all desperately wish that Vitruvius was illustrated anciently, it would clarify a lot of things, but I suspect that to vitruvius, the illustrations were unnecessary. Now, for any practical scientific writing today, illustrations are ubiquitous. Yet they are not in the Ancient World. A Gray's Anatomy would be a wonder to the Romans.

What this says about the Romans is very interesting. It's not like they don't have a visual culture, they have an abundance of it, but on areas of science, cartography, mathematics, they do not appear to make images or illustrations, even the simplest ones. The first geometry books with significant illustrations are Arab ones for example.

Now this begs the question. Did Romans have scientific images and they were all lost? or did they never exist in the first place?

Take another example, the famous Vatican Vergil. The thinking had been that there were examples of narrative illustrated manuscripts in the early Roman era on scrolls that were transfered to codices, this is Weitzmann's whole hypothesis, and yet, when we go looking for evidence, it remains a hypothesis.

I don't think that an object like the Vatican Vergil existed much before the 4th C. Conceptually, something changed.

Why Romans, who were certainly used to thinking in visual terms, did not make visual representations to match, is a big mystery.

The Christian empire however is very different, and images take on new significance. When Cosmas Indicopleustes makes his Christian Topography, he includes an actual diagram of the world to explain his theories, a first for the field of geography. He refers to the diagram in the text, something no roman text ever does.

The Roman (or Greek) author expects his reader to infer the visual conceptualization from the text, that is, they believe it to be so concrete as to require no further elaboration. Illusrations seem to be superflous.

The Medieval or Byzantine author never does, and never takes his audience for granted and (in language and in image) lays it before his eyes all the time, for even the most simple stuff.

There are thousands of different angles you can take on this, still not sure which if any (or all) is "right".

Are the Romans writing to educated elites, while the Christians are writing to a broader audience? (This is a corollary of Ambrose's defense of images as books for the iliterate) or are Christians simply more pedantic, didactic, obtuse? Are Romans more empirical while the Medieval mind is more anagogical? You can make any endless series of arguments really depending on how you want to spin it.

For my dissertation, I try to focus on the text itself. For example, Cosmas uses language very differently from other geographers. His theories practically demand a visual counterpart, whereas Ptlomey's lists do not, though they imply one.

My suspicion, and this is only a suspicion, is that icons, and the method of religious devotion, changes the relationships between the viewer and the image. But this trend begins long before Christianity, which is why it's so thorny.

Anyway, I'd be happy to talk to you about it.

What is your dissertaion on?

The abstract for mine is here. If you are interested.

http://astro.temple.edu/~tlclark/cv.htm

[Kevin J. Aschenmeier]

I seem to recall part of one of Aristophanes comedies where a map is either mentioned or hinted at. My apologies, it has been years since I read Aristophanes.

From memory the scenario was something like this: An Athenian is explaining to another how close Sparta is. He shows him a map. The second Athenian replies that that is way to close and that he should move it further away.

I will have to look for the reference. I think I have Aristophanes' text somewhere in my library. Could take a while.

I probably have jumbled the scenario in my mind. Any scholars of Aristophanes out there?

Kevin

[Praefectusclassis]

Hi Travis,
Thanks for such a long reply to a short question. My dissertation is on Roman naval forces and one method of research that has often been used is the study of (suspected) naval ports to say something about their purposes. Now that is fine if you're talking (for instance) about Seleucia Pieria, the harbor of Antioch. If you find naval troops there, it's a good bet they're there for logistics purposes. It becomes trickier if you try to explain the location of Misenum with the area it was supposed to control. It presupposes a similar understanding of geography for the Romans. On land, the idea of the 'shortening of the limes' by marching on to the Elbe, has now been discredited because of new insights in Roman geographical understanding.
Anyways, even if 'Agrippa's map' was prolly only a textual explanation, what about the Forma Urbis?

[tlclark]

Kevin!

Don't know the Aristophanes reference. If you find it pass it on!

It sounds like Aristophanes typical cynicism of science.

Thanks.

Jasper,

Thanks for the reply!

I really do love this stuff. It sounds like we are on totally different ends of the scholastic spectrum. For me it's not really important how good the maps are, only how they visualize it, since I'm only looking at the art it generates. So I only have to deal with the images and what it says about the people making it, not whether it matches up with reality. For example, my guy Cosmas, reconstructs the earth as a conical mountain, and rejects Ptolemy's spheres. It sounds like you need to know if the visualizations actually match up with something real.

That's a MUCH harder problem. Good luck.:wink:

The severan map is a good point because it is such an anomaly.

First, it is late, which is one thing, so we are right in the era when the perceptual shift is being made.

Second, it's very fragmentary.

Third, it is only concerned with structures, not topography. There are no indications to anything but the most general geographical references in Rome. Its emphasis is on the architecture, and principally, significant imperial structures. Pompey's theater is there, but many other significant republican monuments are not even though we know that they survived into the late period.

So it's as much an exercise in architectural planning and politics as it is geography.

Fourth, it's very local, and there is a lot of evidence for local maps, but very little for global or broad regional maps. That's why the map of calabria is a big deal, it seems to cover a broad area. We have local maps, and cosmologies, it's the space in-between that is so muddy right now.

Looking back at my last post I realize I was speaking in broad generalities so let me add some rear-covering qualifiers. I DO think the ancients had maps. There's no doubt that there were maps, but they were largely local, idiosyncratic and passed from hand to hand and highly specialized. And they were also certainly full or errors. There certainly was a heck of a lot of local knowledge, but on a large scale, there were no globally operational theories or structures in place for making anything like an accurate atlas. The 'world book atlas' never existed in the Roman world, or even the Roman mind! Which is just baffling. The only global-scale models are very patchy and largely inadequate.

In fact we see this in later copies of geographies. The Armenian geography of Ananias of Sirak (Translated by Robert hewsen) borrows heavily from Ptlomey, Strabo, and many others, except when it gets to Armenia. Here the author jettisons Ptolemy's lists in favor of local knowledge that is far superior to Ptomey's second-hand knowledge.

I've got a whole chapter to write on ancient maps and cosmologies and how there simply is no precedent for Cosmas' sixth century topography.

Aw gosh, there's just too much to talk about. We should probably continue this topic off the boards.

Thanks again,

Travis

[L. Aufidius Pantera]

Wow, this certainly is taking off...

Jasper - as for locating Misenum (and Ravenna?!) where they are, do you not think it has more to do with finding very suitable harbour sites on either side of Italy? It may seem simplified to just say bung a fleet on either side of Italy... but while I have every respect for the Romans and their pan-geographic knowledge, it does seem very proficient to locate these sites in terms of an overall strategic location within the mediterranenan...(me pessimist, still)

Wrt the forma urbis - I agree that its mainly focussed on architectural and imperial grand buildings, but it does have definite spatial aspects such as the (fairly accurate) run of the tiber. So are we saying that the Romans could do real space on a small scale, but not when it came to a "large scale"?

But if that was the case, how did they manage feats such as the German Limes (Odenwald, Wetterau and Raetia in particular), the Fossatum Africae and the Strata Diocletiana - all of which clearly show an awareness of topography on a very large scale, combined with a high degree of "central" (even if only on a provincial scale) organization... surely that would not have been possible without some form of documentation of the area?

Somehow it seems difficult - to me - to identify of what the Romans could, and what they could not do...

C.

[Praefectusclassis]

Jasper - as for locating Misenum (and Ravenna?!) where they are, do you not think it has more to do with finding very suitable harbour sites on either side of Italy? It may seem simplified to just say bung a fleet on either side of Italy...

But why not (for instance) Ostia? (Political reasons, probably)
Why not Brundisium on the east coast? It is quite possible to suspect some sort of organic growth of the fleet bases, but still, I like to find interesting answers vs. Reddé, who states explicitly that if you know where the fleets were based, you know what their tasks were.

[tlclark]

Wrt the forma urbis - I agree that its mainly focussed on architectural and imperial grand buildings, but it does have definite spatial aspects such as the (fairly accurate) run of the tiber. So are we saying that the Romans could do real space on a small scale, but not when it came to a "large scale"?

Well I would put lots of weasly academic language and qualifiers around what you said but yes, that's basically what I am saying, knowing full well it sounds absurd on it's face, but that does seem to be the case.

It's kinda like when I tell my students about the fact that Romans didn't have stirrups or the giggles I get when I tell them about public latrines, and the infamous public sponge on a stick. There are many things that just seem intuitive and its hard to imagine doing without them but it appears to be the case.

Romans seem to have no scientific system or means of mapping, nor any global system for the world other than the bare bone basics. That's why Ptolemy is so revolutionary. He was obviously addressing a big need for a global system, but even then he chose to use coordinates, not maps. the method precedes the map. Later, the map is the method.

Now the medieval world had maps, lots of them, most lousy, but they had them. The map becomes the method of charting the world, rather than an artifact of it. That's a perceptual change, and I think, (and this is really out there I know,) because the Christian worldview encourages it, but that is just speculation.

Travis

[tlclark]

But if that was the case, how did they manage feats such as the German Limes (Odenwald, Wetterau and Raetia in particular), the Fossatum Africae and the Strata Diocletiana - all of which clearly show an awareness of topography on a very large scale, combined with a high degree of "central" (even if only on a provincial scale) organization... surely that would not have been possible without some form of documentation of the area?

The same way they made the aqueducts, the roads and many other things besides. One brick at a time and lots of local help and knowledge.

I have a friend doing his dissertation on Roman engineering and he thinks that the Romans used a lot of "cheats" in their architectural calculations, using more rule of thumb and experience as a guide than any analytical approach to building. Mathematics is a separate "egghead" science in Roman terms, fine for philosophers, but not builders.

When Justinian gets Anthemios and Isidore to take on Hagia Sophia, it's a very big change in the way buildings are made.

I'm trying to prove the same kind of shift in map-making.

Travis

[Robert Vermaat]

Ahh, ancient Roman maps....
Did anyone know there's a discussion raging these past decades about Roman maps and Roman presence in the Low Countries?
Some layman archivarian, a mr Delahaye, Ptolomy in hand, developed a theory that the map showed The Netherlands as mostly submerged. As a result, he concluded that the Roman history of The Netherlands was a fake, and that as a consequence, Roman history was to be sought in Northern France and Belgium... hock:

Don't laugh! The guy (he's dead now, but his son runs a website) has had many followers, who still argue his case with a vehemence you would be surprised of. I attempted a discussion with such a 'disciple', to little or no avail. He (like the rest) claimed that Utecht was really Maastricht, that the legionary fortress at Nijmegen was just a temporary fort, because the 'real' Noviomagus was in France.. :?

No, they're not hindered by any real knowledge of archaeology. the Kalkriese battle was of course not fought in Germany, but in Belgium.. he actually claimed the Kalkriese finds were from a battle between two rival Roman armies (no Germanic artefacts, he said..)! hock: In the end I put my brother on the case, and he discussed the guy to a standstill in about two weeks...

Below is a map they use:

[L. Aufidius Pantera]

Jasper - as for Misenum, I think it may be down to there being a long established offloading point at Pozzuoli for grain transports from Alexandria. And the initial harbour was built in a natural harbour (as I'm sure you well know :wink: ) - same at Ravenna. I think it appears that for the establishment of the new main bases of fleets, they tried to create entirely new harbours with all associated structures, rather than to incorporate the whole thing into existing civilian ports... same happens earlier at Frejus. Though I DO NOT think this carries on - later they clearly use any harbour that tickles their fancy, which makes identifying them archaeologically so difficult...

Travis - thats what I thought was what your were trying to say. And I don't think it sounds absurd. As regards the stone to stone approach to establishing the frontiers, and the engineering "cheats", I am not quite sure I buy it just yet. More convincing needed, I'm afraid.

I don't think you just cheat your way to a structure such as the Pantheon or the Danube bridge as Drobeta, let alone things like the Carthage aqueduct. And the Romans definitely had the method to build things along a straight line over 360odd km (see Upper German Limes) and conscientously did not use it at the Wetterau or in Raetia. But if you look at fort placement and unit disposition in these installation, they are clearly governed by a system imposed on the entire frontier with regard to each province. I don't see how that can happen when you are adopting changes locally. By all means include local information, but these bits of info have tobe gathered at a central planning point and understood. For this they must have been documented somehow...

C.

[L. Aufidius Pantera]

:lol: Robert. Not fair. That made me laugh far too much...

interesting theory. but how on earth do you fit in all those lovely Roman finds from Northern Holland and the mouth of the Rhine such as Velsen?

Roman divers?

C.

[Robert Vermaat]

Simple. Plain denial. :lol:
Yes, they claim the real fort was located in Belgium, and the Velsen finds were just short-lived camps or acquired through trade. Simple, if you aren't hinderd by facts.
The point is that much of what we know is built on shaky evidence and a lot of assumptions.
Take the presence of Leg. X gemina at Noviomagus/Nijmegen. No source actually says it was stationed there, does it? Sure, we know the legionary fortress is undeniable, and we have all the evidence from stamped rooftiles and such, but reasoned stricktly from the historical point of view we'd have a hard time proving our point.
Of course, they laugh away archaeological sources, or intentionally misinterpret them, using only the scraps they want to use..