Original Roman era route planners are interesting in their own right.
Not so much 2D projections on a plane (as seen in the link), more 1.5D scrolls akin to railway | subway route graphics.
The road scrolls unroll to reveal parallel lones, left and right, horizontally departing a central hub, with waypoints for destinations marked along the way.
Early examples of network diagrams collapsed to a near linear projection.
Thank you for the jumping off point, fascinating! I discovered Tabula Peutingeriana[1]. Is this what you were referring to or are there other layouts to be found?
Yep, Tabula Peutingeriana is easily the best known example and the tip of my tongue that I failed to mention by name :-)
There are others that I have seen in the British Library collection and some in Rome but I'd be struggling to name them - I had a lot of exposure to experts in History of Maps back in the 1980s|1990s when I was working bridging wet film photogrammetry and digital mapping, sadly my main focus was programming, mathematics, lens geometry, unification of existing maps under WGS84.
All the examples I've seen have that subway diagram look, albeit freehanded, and clearly were all part of a tradition of road maps in that related style.
The program is fun, but I'd like it more if it spelled place names correctly.
I've tried building road from Lutetia to Olyssipo (which are totally correct spellings), and the program didn't accept it. The program wants me to type... "Lvteci" and "Olisipo".
Okay, Olisipo is a possible variant, but what in the world is Lvteci?
There is absolutely no reason to use "v" in "Lvteci". Before U/V were separate letters, sometimes V was used for uppercase, u for lowercase; sometimes v was used in the beginning and the end of the words. But "Lvteci" makes absolutely no sense.
At the very least the program should treat U/V and I/J as same letters when typing the names. Or maybe make the search field all-caps and replace u's with V's.
Why would you say that? U and J are not used in classical Latin, they’re mediaeval innovations, presumably this website deals with the Rome of classical times?
Back when Lutetia was called Lutetia, it was written with V.
It still wasn't written with -ci though, which also seems to me a medieval innovation (in French, it was written as Lutece).
I think they either should accept the original Roman spelling of Lvtetia, or the various modernized forms Lutetia, Lutece and Lutecia. But accepting only "Lvteci" seems like an anachronism to me.
(edit: that said, when I search for "lugd" I do get search results for LVGDVNO, so maybe the search got improved?)
The original Roman square capitals variant is like this: LV́TÉTIA (too lazy to make an image; I hope you have a serif typeface, it's closer enough)
The cursive eventually evolved into "lutetia"
The square capitals eventually into "LVTETIA"
Later, people decided to use both versions together, using letters like L, V, T, E in the beginning of sentences and names; and letters like l, u, t, e elsewhere.
What happened in mediaeval times is that people decided added lowercase v and uppercase U. So, Lvtetia is ahistorical: it should be Lutetia or LVTETIA or lutetia, since lowercase v is a later invention.
(Similar thing happened when Turkish people devised their Latin script: they divided I/i into I/ı and İ/i. Using Lvtetia is like using Lvtetıa, because Romans didn't put dots over their I's.)
> (edit: that said, when I search for "lugd" I do get search results for LVGDVNO, so maybe the search got improved?)
This I think indicates that you misunderstand what "spelling" means. Casing is unrelated to spelling. "Lvtetia" and "LVTETIA", and indeed "lUtETia" are using the same spelling.
> Later, people decided to use both versions together, using letters like L, V, T, E in the beginning of sentences and names; and letters like l, u, t, e elsewhere.
This only happened much later, and does not concern Classical Latin.
Sure, I'm not defending "Lvteci", no idea what that is supposed to be, but I'm vehemently against using "u" and "j" for Classical Latin, it hurts my eyes. I wish those letters were never invented at all!
> I only read monumental inscriptions, that's where Latin shines
Even with monumental inscriptions, you'd need to carefully filter them to make sure you only read old ones. The newer ones frequently include U, e.g. I like this little poem in a park in Coimbra: http://bloguinho.casa/img/2017/01/nemus-litterae-old.jpg (the park also includes more poems, which is pretty cool). Too bad we don't have such Latin poems in Porto, where I live now.
> Btw “demetrius”, my other pet peeve is Latin endings on Greek words and names.
You seem to choose pet peeves that are opposite to mine! I don't like Greek word declinations in Latin (why write Leopolin if you can write Leopolim?) and I like the i/j, v/u distinction in Latin.
> good to know I will be safe from bastardized Latin!
You should stay away from the house 1255 on rua de Constituição, then (it has this: https://imageup.ru/img91/3990079/porto.jpg — although it's the only text in Latin I've seen here so far)
Yes, I'm very partial to Greek, I studied it before Latin, and for much longer. My hellenophilia is especially strong now when I happen to be in Greece.
Leopolim? As in the accusative form of Lvov?
Feel free to send me more tips to the email in my profile!
> U and J are not used in classical Latin, they’re mediaeval innovations
They were totally legit variants of V and I, especially in cursive. Cursive U/V was much closer to U than to V.
When cut in stone, V was easier to cut, and stone tends to be preserved better, so we see V more often. But at the same time, people would write U when writing.
What happened in mediaeval times is that people decided that U and V are two different letters. But both U and V existed long before that, they just were two forms of the same letter.
And since our lowercase letters are based on cursive forms, it makes much more sense to use u in the lowercase. Which is what modern sources that don't distinguish U and V do (e.g. Oxford Latin dictionary would not use "U" in uppercase and "v" in lowercase).
> Back when Lutetia was called Lutetia, it was written with V.
Well, it was also written with E and not e, and T and not t, but you seem to have no problem with that.
Lvtetia makes absolutely no sense. Lvᴛᴇᴛɪᴀ might be OK, it's at least consistent (albeit hard to type). But Lvtetia is a Frankenstein's monster: you freeze the evolution of V into u, but keep evolutions of other letters intact.
We are not using cursive here, so Roman cursive is not all that relevant.
I sort of see what you mean here though:
"And since our lowercase letters are based on cursive forms, it makes much more sense to use u in the lowercase"
But I would conclude that the textbox should only use capital letters. When I wrote that it should say "Lvtetia", I obviously meant "LVTETIA". Minuscules are not different letters, they are variant forms, so by using modern capitalization I didn't mean to imply anything about how the program should do it, bicameral writing is a modern fad.
...but a fault-tolerant search could still accept both. Yeah, I know, that's one of those features that users expect these days but isn't that easy to implement...
One more improvement: instead of just drawing straight lines between the cities, they could follow the actual Roman roads, which are mostly known.
If it was up to me the from field should only work with ablative forms, and the to field should require the accusative form, but the author is probably more broad minded.
I'm really curious about the whole paragraph about Lvteci. My Latin studies are way behind me so pardon me if I'm getting things wrong but I thought a) there was a point in time where the latin alphabet only had uppercase characters and b) U or u was not in the alphabet at the time and uppercase V was always the vowel and the consonant.
There are two things going on: one is the script, and the other is orthography.
The classical orthographic system uses consonantal "u" and "i" -- both are used for both the vowel and the consonant. A later orthographic system uses "v" and "j" when "u" or "i" are used as consonants. Today, you'll find a dog's breakfast of orthographic systems, sometimes in the same text (e.g. some current texts use consonantal "u", but do not use consonantal "j" and strikes some people as barbarically inconsistent).
In the classical world, you had engraving and handwriting. Handwriting was done in a Roman cursive script and looks quite different than anything you've probably seen. Engraving was done in majascules and written "U" looked like "V", just to totally confuse everyone after the middle ages (and because V is probably easier to engrave than U).
> The program is fun, but I'd like it more if it spelled place names correctly.
The spelling of "Luteci" seems to have been adpoted directly from the Tabula Peutingeriana, where "Lutecia" (a late form of "Lutetia") is missing its final "a" (see the little image, when clicking on Paris in the map).[1]
"U" and "V" could be used interchangeable in Latin throught most of its history.[2] Typically a text uses either "U" or "V" exclusively. Using "U" for the /u/ sound and "V" for the /w/ sound in the same text starts to appear in the late Middle Ages.[3]
But even today a lot of scholarly editions prefer not to normalise an ancient text to "modern" spellings. In this case they typically use "V" throughout (I cannot remember seeing any that uses "U" throughout). The programme thus conforms to an established philological convention.[4]
[1] "Luteci" seems to be a rather odd variant indeed. But if you type into the input box "Lutetia" it lets you select "Luteci". You may also use "Lisboa" to get "Olisipo". But yes, the programme primarily uses the spelling of its sources and does not include a sophisticated synopsis. But I can also understand that including such a feature for all these place names, each of which probably has half a dozen variants, would be a major undertaking in itself.
[2] "V", which developed from "Y", was the older form. The graphem "U" starts to appear in Late Antiquity. There had been an earlier attempt of emperor Claudius himself, to introduce an upside-down Digamma (Ⅎ) for the /w/ sound, which did not prevail. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudian_letters
[3] In many modern languages the letter "U" for a /w/ sound is preserved in some names, such as "Suetonius" (the first "U" is a /w/ sound), and in connection with "Q" as "QU", a combination of /k/+/w/ sounds. In English this combination is even used for words of Germanic origin, such as "Queen"; in contrast to e.g. Swedish "kvinna" ("woman").
[4] In this aspect the programme deviates from its source. The Tabula Peutingeriana itself, which is a late 12th century copy of of a presumably Roman original, uses a medieval script with a "u" graphem troughout.
Very interesting. I was brought up in Caernarfon, or Segontium (Segontio on the map, although I've never seen that spelling before).
I've walked and run part of the Roman road along the north Wales coast. Much of it is the old pilgrim's path that goes from Treffynon (Holywell) in the east to Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island) off the tip of the western Llyn peninsula. It's a strange feeling to walk along a route that has been walked for milenia.
But a shame that Sarn Helen isn't there, but I know there isn't much evidence of its existence.
> It's a strange feeling to walk along a route that has been walked for milenia.
I was literally born on the via Emilia, a clogged artery of Northern Italy connecting Milano to Rimini on the Eastern coast. Obviously, loads of towns and cities have since developed all along that road. A significant amount of important roads all across Europe are similarly old, people just don't know or notice.
Interesting. I live in a barbarian part of the Netherlands north of the Limes boundary, so no Roman roads for me.
Kinda weird how the OpenStreetMap base map behind is configured to show German names first in all of Europe before the local names (Straße von Dover for the Strait of Dover/Pas de Calais). I would expect the Latin names.
Would be fun to (a) put the historic roman names for places in OSM, and (b) create map tiles that mimic the maps that are shown when clicking on the places. Would make for a much nicer presentation than the default OSM tiles (which aren't exactly meant for this sort of thing).
Well, lots of places already have name:la (Latin) tagged, and since it is a dead(-ish) language it often matches the historic name Romans used, but you'll get edge cases like Lugdunum Batavorum which has been used as the Latin name of Leiden since the renaissance, but which is now considered to have been the name of nearby Katwijk. So the tag name:la=Lugdunum Batavorum is correct for Leiden (it is called that in Latin), but arguably not historically correct (it's not the same Lugdunum the Romans knew).
There were still plenty of Roman settlements to the north of Brussels, so it's a bit curious that Belgica itself seems hardly populated. Maybe because of that tiny town that kept on resisting Roman rule?
It's probably the map tiles from openstreetmap.de, which show names preferably in German. Unlike the tiles from openstreetmap.org, which show names in the country's native language by default.
The map misses a road which heads out from Cambridge to Colchester that shouldn't be difficult to spot given that it's called the 'Roman Road'. Even the Romans should be able to spot that.
It only includes roads and locations mentioned in two sources: the Peutinger map ("tabula Peutingeriana" [0]) and the Itinerarium Antonini [1]. Clearly you've found where those sources lacked precision.
The routefinding also seems to be seriously imperfect. This journey from London to Tripoli takes the land route around the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean coast: https://omnesviae.org/#!iter_OVPlace427_TPPlace292
Zaragoza was once known as CAESARAVGVSTA. Seems like the modern name follows directly from slight mistranslation and drift from the original name over the years.
This might be an interesting trip planner demo to make. I'm currently playing around with DigiTransit [1] (a journey planning app based on OpenTripPlanner, mostly used in Finland I think), curious if it would allow this level of customization.
The lack of Roman roads in modern day Belgium may be due to the loss of some written records and missing archaeological information.
For example, the article "Roman highway uncovered between Antwerp and West Flanders" was published in 2021-03-17. It says, "Archaeological excavations in Adegem near Maldegem, West Flanders, have uncovered traces of a Roman road linking Antwerp to an important Roman camp. The existence of the road was known, but now for the first time there is archaeological evidence. The Roman road between Antwerp and the West Flemish municipality of Oudenburg has been discovered during archaeological excavations carried out as part of the construction of a supermarket...." https://www.thebulletin.be/roman-highway-uncovered-between-a...
Fascinating to know the Romans had reached India. Gods only know what could have happened if Rome had gone against China. Would they be speaking Latin or we could have been speaking Chinese dialect if we lost ...
It would be fantastic if it included a time estimate too. They could use the De Bello Gallico as reference for expected speeds (maybe toned down a little, to account for Julius Caesar's well-known self-aggrandizing tendencies).
Magnifico Lavoro!!! Would love to see the exact street map and not direct line from point to point.
The feature to see mountain/river crossing on the direction tab is fantastic.
Not so much 2D projections on a plane (as seen in the link), more 1.5D scrolls akin to railway | subway route graphics.
The road scrolls unroll to reveal parallel lones, left and right, horizontally departing a central hub, with waypoints for destinations marked along the way.
Early examples of network diagrams collapsed to a near linear projection.