Roman Cartography: A Utilitarian Legacy
Uploaded by
ScribdTranslationsRoman Cartography: A Utilitarian Legacy
Uploaded by
ScribdTranslationsRomanian cartographer:
Current maps are based on mathematical cartography that began in Greece.
classical, where their cartographic advances reached levels of perfection that were never achieved again
equal until the 15th century.
In Rome, on the contrary, that advance in cartography experienced in Greece is not noticeable and there is
What distinguishes the world map, which follows the Ionian circular model and was common in the Middle Ages?
Antigua, and the totally practical itineraries that awaken the greatest interest and that indicate
the routes that were to be used by armies, merchants, travelers, etc.
Their maps were practical, they did not require astronomical measurements or projections. The
they were used to represent trade and military routes.
Representative maps of Rome:
Orbis Terrarum (whole world):
Roman cartography was characterized by having a decidedly utilitarian orientation,
from the point of view of expansion, of the empire. The maps were mostly military
of the conquered or to be conquered world, within the concept of the orbis terrarum, which placed
Rome, at the center of the world as it was then known, was part of the motivation that led to
Rome in the conquest of the world, trying to fulfill a kind of destiny.
manifesto. Note how a situation of geopolitical nature shapes character
cartographic of the time.
It was classified as the first modern atlas. Each map was accompanied by a
explanation about what was depicted in the illustration: marking scales and degrees of altitude,
they also contributed a geometric network of roads.
The derived geographical concept was so dominant that the orbis terrarum maps ...
they continued to copy a lot during the Middle Ages.
Peutinger Table: It is a cartogram that highlights, in addition to Rome and the routes.
imperial, the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian seas. Contains names of more than 5000 places
geographical.
Peutinger Table
The Peutinger Table or Tabula Peutingeriana (named in honor of the humanist
16th century German, Konrad Peutinger) is a type of map where the itineraries appear.
they traversed from end to end the various Roman imperial provinces (about 4000 are noted
settlements). It is painted in full color on a scroll of parchment almost seven meters long.
long.
In the table, you can see a Roman road network that runs from Spain to the
India, the parchment is oriented from West to East and the capital of the empire occupies the place
central. Both the land extensions and the seas appear distorted. The roads
they are represented as almost straight lines that cross the sheet from one end to the other connecting
cities whose names are indicated. Not drawn to scale: the distances between the cities
they are indicated on the sides of the roads. Along with the routes, the most important monuments are also indicated.
highlights, which are important landmarks for the traveler; thus, the castles,
churches, lighthouses, towers or wooded areas, represent as groups of buildings. One of the routes
the most used was the Via Francigena, the main communication artery between Central Europe and
Italy.
Celestial Maps:
A star map is a map of the night sky, used to identify and locate.
astronomical objects, such as stars, constellations, galaxies and have been used for the
human navigation since ancient times.
For centuries, long before nautical instruments helped man to
navigating at sea, one of the few signs that ancient sailors had
when it got dark it was the stars. That's how the habit of drawing them was born, of making
primitive versions of the sky to be able to understand the situation at a given moment.
Some of the most beautiful and technically complex maps appeared during the
golden age of cartography, at the dawn of European modernity. In particular, since the
invention of the telescope (1610). Both scientific and popular imagination were captivated.
captivated by astronomy, which generated a market thirsty for works that would show
Graphically the knowledge of the moment. The view of celestial maps reached its peak.
maximum with the magnificent "Macrocosm Harmony" by Andreas Cellarius in 1660.
The celestial atlas that set the standard for those that would come later, during the 17th century,
It was the Uranometria, created by the Bavarian lawyer and editor Johann Bayer, in 1603. This
influential work based on the catalog of stars by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. In that
In the past, projection calculations were made with instruments such as the astrolabe and the
quadrant. The Uranometry was a fundamental scientific work, conceived so that the
astronomers use it to track the movement of planets, the Moon, and others
celestial bodies, as well as their later representation on a map, also introduced the
identification system of the stars in the constellation based on brightness, making
use of the letters of the Greek alphabet (such as, for example, Alpha Centauri). Aside from its
functionality, the Bayer atlas was an object of great beauty that presented the information in
51 plates engraved with great skill.
The sky, in all its aspects, played a much more important role in the
the life of 17th century Europeans than in ours, and this regardless of their position
social. Thus, ordinary people eagerly consulted horoscopes to know that
fate would spare them. At that time, the fear of events was very widespread.
like solar eclipses or the passage of a comet.
The increasing acceptance of the heliocentric model of the universe (formulated at the end of
16th century by Nicolaus Copernicus) became the cornerstone of a new rational science
and empirical. Isaac Newton argued that, since astrology dealt with the relationships between
the planets, it was irrelevant that a celestial body was located in the center of the system and, by
consequently, it remained a valid area of research.
The most famous celestial atlas of the 16th century was the 'Atlas Coelestis' (1660), also
known as Macroscopic Harmony, by the German cartographer Andreas Cellarius. It included 29
double-page plates hand-colored and more than 200 pages of comments in Latin.
splendid illustrations from Cellarius's celestial atlas address a wide range of themes,
like the orbits of the planets around the Earth, the planispheres of the systems of
different astronomers, a diagram of the lunar phases, the constellations of the hemispheres
North and South or the relative sizes of celestial bodies. Cellarius presents the reader with the vision
geocentric universe of Ptolemy, with its imaginative and false hypothesis related to
movement of the planets, along with the more modern systems of Brahe and Copernicus. A
Despite the undeniable accuracy of their star maps and other celestial bodies, some
Aspects of Macrocoscopic Harmony lack scientific foundation.
Biography: Jewels of Cartography
100 examples of how cartography defined, modified, and apprehended the world – Clark J. O. E.
Barcelona, Parragon Books, 2006
Webgraph: etccccccc
