Tabula Peutingeriana – Place of the Day
By tabula-peutingeriana.com
Categories: History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel
One place a day from the Tabula Peutingeriana, the only surviving road map of the Roman Empire: a short episode on what its name means, where it lies today and how the map draws it. The same place as on tabula-peutingeriana.com that day. All episodes at once are in the feed "Places of the Roman Road Map". The narrations are written with AI from the scholarly record of TP-Online (KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) and read by a synthetic voice.
39 episodes indexed on PodSearch.
Recent episodes
- Singara (Shingal, شنكال)
Singara, today Shingal in Iraq, was a strongly fortified Roman colony on a wide, dry plain, and the map marks it with a pair of towers. The Roman historian Ammianus tells how defenders on its towers saw the Persians approaching across the plain from far away. Nearby the emperor Constantius was…
- Xatis Scythae (Chatae Scythae)
Xatis Scythae names a Scythian people, placed on the map in the vast lands of Asia beyond the Sea of Azov. They are usually matched with a Scythian tribe listed by the geographer Ptolemy, who set them already within Serica, the distant land of silk, beyond the Imaeus range and reaching down to the…
- Alonianum (H. Somua)
Alonianum was a station in the province of Africa Proconsularis, on the road from the colony of Thelepte to Tacape by way of the Tritonian marsh, and it is placed at the ruin site of Henchir Somua. The figure from Thelepte reads twenty-one Roman miles, about thirty-one kilometres, though its…
- Lazo (Taht-i-Suleiman)
Lazo, drawn with the usual pair of towers, is generally taken for Gazaca, the capital of Atropatene in the Iranian highlands, whose ruins lie at Takht-i-Suleiman in modern Iran. The Greek geographer Strabo calls it a town in a plain and the summer residence of the kings. Its name goes back to an…
- Anar
Anar was placed by older research near Korna, where the Euphrates and the Tigris join. The Ravenna list probably has the same stop as Narra, at the matching point in its order. The map counts forty Roman miles from Aserga and twenty-five on to Assabe.
- Osismii (Osimii)
The Osismii were a Celtic people living on the western tip of Brittany, roughly today's Finistère in France. The map, however, sets them far from home, beside Gesoriacum, modern Boulogne-sur-Mer, apparently confusing it with Gesocribate, a similar-sounding town in their own Breton lands. The Greek…
- Vesontine (Besançon)
Vesontio, now Besançon in France, was the chief stronghold of the Sequani, a Gallic people. The town sits inside an almost closed loop of the river Doubs, its one narrow neck guarded by a steep hill, and Caesar, who described this natural fortress at length, took it by forced marches in 58 BC…
- Foroba (Karamağara)
Foroba is known only from this map, perhaps a medieval copyist's slip for Soroba, and both its identity and its site are unclear. It stood on the road from Mazaca Caesarea towards Sebasteia, a route that also let travellers avoid the Antitaurus passes, up to 1800 metres high, which blocked the…
- Aquis (Ain-Younès (Barrington) · Hr. Baghla (Miller))
Aquis, simply 'at the waters', lay six Roman miles, about nine kilometres, from Thignica in the province of Africa, in what is now Tunisia, and is placed at Aïn Younès. Inscriptions speak of a town of Thignica in two parts, and one of them mentions large baths in the other part, which may well…
- Ratupis (Richborough (Barrington))
Ratupis, today Richborough near Sandwich in Kent, was the harbour where Channel travellers of the imperial age usually came ashore after the crossing from Boulogne. The map marks it with a pair of towers, and the road from Dover simply ends there. Around AD 300 a fort was built, later held by the…
- Ponte Aufidi (Ponte Venere)
Ponte Aufidi was the bridge by which the Via Appia crossed the Aufidus, now the Ofanto, between Aquilonia and Venusia, and the old bridge still stands, known as Ponte Santa Venere. The Aufidus, the largest river of Apulia, rises near Compsa, bends round Monte Vulture and flows past Canusium and…
- Iovallio (Valpovo)
Iovallio, the Iovalia of the pilgrim from Bordeaux, was a place to change horses on the road along the Drava to Mursa, at the market town of Valpovo in Croatia. The Greek geographer Ptolemy lists it as Iouallon, the list of places compiled in Ravenna as Joballios. The map sets Iovallio nine Roman…
- Arcadia (Arkadia)
Arcadia, the mountainous heart of the Peloponnese in Greece, nearly lost a letter on the Tabula. The copyist first wrote Arcaia, and the missing d was squeezed in afterwards in a different ink, poorly inked and oddly placed, perhaps by the same hand that corrected a nearby name. The region is…
- Francia
Francia is the land of the Franks, a loose league of smaller Germanic tribes whose collective name is usually explained as 'the bold' or 'the eager for battle'. Unlike most peoples on the map, they are marked not by a tribal name but by a territory, set beyond the Rhine opposite the Batavian lands…
- Vapincum (Gap)
Vapincum is Gap, the chief town of the Avantici in the land of the Vocontii, on the old road over the Montgenèvre between Italy and Gaul. Here the Alpine road divided, one branch running down the Durance to Arles, the other over the Col de Cabre to Valence. Two hill forts on the heights of…
- Gabuleo (Prizren?)
Gabuleo, the Roman Gabuleum, was a station on the road from Lissus on the Adriatic to Naissus, placed by older research at Prizren in Kosovo, though a later view of the road's course preferred Gjakova. The list of places compiled in Ravenna writes Gebulion. The map sets Gabuleo seventeen Roman…
- Insula Sucron (Hyères?)
Insula Sucron is perhaps to be found among the islands off Hyères on the French Riviera, though the identification is only tentative. The map has pushed the nearby Lérins islands far along the coast towards Narbonne, so the two islands drawn beyond them may stand for the Hyères group. The name…
- Fines Cilicie (Kiliseler unterhalb von Tahir, ca. 10 km südsüdwestl. von Beypazarı)
Sykeon, the home of Saint Theodore, who lived here from about 540 to 613, stood at this station on the Pilgrims' Road, a village with an inn on the imperial highway beside the river Siberis, the ancient Hieros. That river had marked the frontier between Bithynia and Galatia before Diocletian, and…
- Segura (La Ségourie)
Segura, more often written Segora, was a road station of the Pictones between Poitiers and Nantes. No fewer than twelve places have been proposed for it, from Bressuire and Secondigny to Segré, but the most likely is La Ségourie, in the commune of Le Fief-Sauvain. On the map space ran short: the…
- Manirate
Manirate is the name of a people, set down in the vast lands the map places east of the Sea of Azov, which the Romans called Lake Maeotis, and beyond the Taurus mountains. Unusually for a people, the name is written in black rather than in the red generally used for such names. No modern…
- Misium
Misium has been compared with the Usis, or Musis, a tributary of the Araxes named by the Roman writer Pliny. Older research placed the station at the ruins in and around Yervandashat in Armenia. The Ravenna list has the same name and adds a stop called Gavala. The map counts fourteen Roman miles…
- Roxulani Sarmatae (Roxulanorum)
The Roxolani Sarmatae were a Sarmatian people of the steppe, nomads who, as the Greek geographer Strabo describes them, roamed with their wagons, tents and herds across the plain between the Don and the Dnieper. The map sets them on the far side of the Dnieper, away from the Don, and in black…
- Lusiene (Dunakömlőd)
Lusiene is the map's form of Lussonium, a Danube fort at Dunakömlőd in Hungary, which the Greek geographer Ptolemy already lists. Its garrisons changed over time: an Alpine cohort of foot soldiers and horsemen, and in late Roman times Dalmatian horsemen. The map sets Lusiene fifteen Roman miles…
- Cnoso (Knosós ~ Irákleion)
Cnoso is Knossos, near today's Heraklion, the old chief city of Crete. On the map it is a plain station on the road across the island, twenty-three miles from Cortina and sixteen, about twenty-four kilometres, from Cresonesso on the coast. In Roman times it was a colony with the proud name Colonia…
- Cardu/o· ((between Catabathmus Maior and Antipyrgos) (Barrington))
Cardum is a bare name without a drawing on the road through Cyrenaica, and even its last letter is uncertain: the map seems to read Cardu, while older copies give Cardo. The Ravenna list writes Gardum and Carduc, and an ancient Greek guide to the coast knows a Kardame. The site has not been found…
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