Overview

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.

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9781107685758

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Reviews

'The great strength of Talbert's book is that it argues - at times almost despite itself - for an imaginative non-cartographical viewing of the Peutinger Table.' Times Literary Supplement 'This book is a very rich, detailed and inspiring study. In combination with the supporting online materials, it will undoubtedly stimulate further research on and debate about the Peutinger map.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review

With his unquestionably fresh or rather, in Talbert's own words radical, not to say provocative interpretation (p. 7), the author succeeds in showing that the Peutinger map indeed represents much more than a mere route diagram . Even if this book may in some parts be too speculative, it is a very rich, detailed and inspiring study. In combination with the supporting online materials, it will undoubtedly stimulate further research on and debate about the Peutinger map. --BMCR

Author Information

Richard J. A. Talbert is William Rand Kenan, Jr, Professor of History and Classics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has taken the lead in establishing the Ancient World Mapping Center. He is the author of several books, including The Senate of Imperial Rome and the collaborative Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World.

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