One of the most important Itineraria which the ancient world has left us is the Tabula Peutingeriana, a medieval copy of a road map dating back to the Roman age.

This document, currently held by the National Library of Vienna under the name Codex Vindobonensis 324, was discovered in 1507 by Konrad Celtes, a librarian of the Emperor Maximilian I, in an unrecorded place, and owes its current name to its second owner, Konrad Peutinger, Chancellor of Ausburg.

The Tabula, a roll of parchment 6.80 m in length and 34 cm in height, made up of 11 segmenta which were originally stuck to one another and later (in 1683) divided into 11 pages, contains a representation of the world as known in ancient times (Europe, Asia, Africa) which therefore, presumably, extended from the Pillars of Hercules to the Far East (India, China, Burma, island of Ceylon).

The fact that Britannia, Spain and the western part of Africa are missing leads us to suppose that part of the Tabula has been lost.

It is important to note that it is not a real cartographic document (there is no exact proportion between the representation and the actual physical elements), but rather a road map that prefers to indicate the road system, marked with stopping-places and the most important towns, while neglecting geographic elements (represented only schematically, especially when they are connected with the road system itself, e.g. a ford, a mountain pass, etc.).

The map's purpose (itinerarium) and its longitudinal development entail a considerable distortion of the lands represented which therefore end up in a different position from their real one with respect to the cardinal points. Moreover, the territories considered most important occupy a greater surface than their actual one: Italy, in particular, as the centre of the empire, extends over no less than five segmenta.

Turning to a more detailed description of the Tabula, we note the use of precise colours to indicate the different physical elements (the Earth in yellow, its outline and most of the inscriptions in black, the roads in red, the seas and rivers in green, the mountains in grey, yellow and pink), and of "ideograms" or illustrations which indicate not only the presence of more or less important towns, but above all the cross-roads from which secondary roads not indicated on the map depart, leading to resting places for the night or for places where horses could be changed. These indications were not so much to be used by private individuals as by the people in charge of the cursus publicus.

Within the various typologies in which it was possible to classify the graphic symbols present on the map 1 , slight departures from fixed schemes may be observed. They do not arise from a wish to represent the landscape "realistically": they simply serve to liven up a representation which would otherwise be monotonous.

Closely related to the graphic content of the map is the problem of its dating. Indeed, although certain elements, especially the palaeographic ones, clearly date back to the medieval era (XI-XII or XII-XIII century), its general conception, however, and the structure of its composition, as well as the presence of given geographic indications, evidently date back to Roman times.

Scholars however do not agree on exactly when the Roman original was drawn up: dates ranges therefore from the III to the IV century AD, not excluding later additions (of the VIII-IX century AD), as well as the existence of much more ancient elements dating back to the Augustan age.

Luciano Bosio believes that the Tabula is actually the final draft of an itinerarium pictum which acquired over time new data that gradually became important with relation to the road and political system of the Roman empire, and of which at least three main drafts can be identified: the Augustan one (connected to the organisation of the cursus publicus), the Severian one (linked to a vast reorganisation of the cursus publicus), and the IV century one (as indicated by elements that certainly date back to an age when Christianity was becoming more widespread). This last draft seems then to have been added to in the VIII-IX century AD, finally reaching the current medieval copy.

1 See A. e M. Levi, Itineraria Picta. Contributo allo studio della Tabula Peutingeriana, Rome, 1967.
2 L. Bosio, La Tabula Peutingeriana, una descrizione del mondo antico, Rimini, 1983, pp.156

Bibliography:

- W. Kubischek, v. "Itinerarien", in Pauly-Wissowa, Real Encyclopaedie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. - K. Miller, Itineraria Romana, Stuttgart, 1916. - A. e M. Levi, Itineraria Picta. Contributo allo studio della tabula Peutingeriana, Rome, 1967. - E. Weber, Tabula Peutingeriana. Codex Vindobonensis 324, Graz, 1976. - L. Bosio, La Tabula peutingeriana, una descrizione del mondo antico, Rimini, 1983.

Domenica Tataranni and Sabrina Violante