The Presentation of Geographical Knowledge for Travel and Transport in the Roman World: Itineraria Non Tantum Adnotata Sed Etiam Picta

Abstract

A recent encyclopedia article on land transport in the ancient world1 surveys the problems associated with travel and transport as realised in classical scholarship. It concentrates on the technicalities of land transport, on harnessing, carts and carriages, on the economic importance of the transport of goods, public transport, travelling, infrastructure and the cost of transport. While this article shows how difficult and expensive land transport was, one problem is not addressed: the simple question of how one knew where to go at all before one even started to travel or transport goods from A to B. It is this – perhaps too obvious – question that we shall try to answer in the following pages: how was geographical knowledge presented for travel and transport in the Roman world?

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