Peutingeriana tabula itineraria, segmentum II, segmentum IV.
Engraved map by Franz Christoff Scheyb.
32.5 x 56 cm.
Edited by Matija P. Katancic.
Engraved by S. Lehnhardt.
Budapest: Royal Printing Office, 1825.

From the collection of the American Academy in Rome, f405.2 Peu K.

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Tips for Educators / Facts about Italy

The Peutinger Table is one of only two specimens of Roman cartography that have come down to us. This extraordinary cartographical document is a form of road map, a Roman ‘itinerarium pictum’, an illustrated, as opposed to a written, itinerary. This road map is compressed within a strip 34 cm wide x 6.75 metres long, in 12 sections. The Table is a 12th or early13th century copy of a map that was probably originally produced in the 4th century A.D.(ca. 335-365). It was discovered by Konrad Celtes, who gave it to Konrad Peutinger, from whom it takes its name. Peutinger (1465-1547) was a German humanist and antiquarian, town clerk of Augsburg, and intimate of the Emperor Maximilian. The Peutinger Table is now in the Austrian National Library in Vienna (Codex Vind. 324).

Although sections of the Peutinger Table were published in the 16th century, the Table was first published completely, in facsimile form, in 1753 by Franz Scheyb, diplomat, litterateur and correspondent of Voltaire and Rousseau. The map in the American Academy is a reprint of that first edition edited by the Franciscan monk Matija Katancic (1750-1825), professor of archaeology and library curator. He published it in the third volume of his Orbis Antiquus ex tabula itineraria (Budapest, 1825), a description of the ancient world taken from original sources. The Peutinger Table depicts the world known to the ancients, from Britain to the Ganges. The Mediterranean is shown as a narrow strip of water between the coasts of Europe and Africa. The map is schematic in form and traces the direct routes between major towns. One of the most important things about the map is that it records so many small places. It also depicts features such as staging posts, spas, large rivers, forests, and the distances between stages. The section exhibited here, Segment II, includes the French coast and Marseilles.

Bibliography:

McKarrow and Woodward, History of Cartography I, pp. 238 ff.

Leo Bagrow, History of Cartography, pp. 37-38.