American Journal of Philology

Elizabeth Rawson, in her impressive study of the intellectual life of the late Roman Republic, writes concerning the famous beginning of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico: “Caesar opens his work by introducing the geography of Gaul from scratch; his account would be clearer if a simple map with the main rivers had been appended, but there is no sign that it was.” ¹ Yet would an ancient reader have responded in the same way? One cannot fault Rawson for desiring a map; ancient geographical accounts are regularly quite confusing and often remain unclear even with a map. But this desire may be something felt only by modern scholars. There is no evidence that the ancients used maps as we do, or that their conception of geography depended on them as ours does today. ² The most striking feature to emerge from O. A. W. Dilke’s survey of ancient cartography is the almost total lack of map consciousness. ³ Maps in the ancient world had limited and specific use. They were either cadastral, showing boundaries or land divisions, or they were novelties, pertaining more to ancient science than to common use. ⁴ [End Page 619]

One possible exception is the famous Tabula Peutingeriana, or Peutinger Map. Thought to be a fourth-century compilation based on a first-century A.D. map, it is the only surviving example of an itinerary map from the Roman period. ⁵ Even so, this map resembles nothing more than a “strip” map, with the emphasis placed on routes and cities, not on accuracy in representing geographical shapes or even location (although it can be argued that such distortion was necessary to fit it on its scroll). Other possible extant cartographic examples, such as from the shield of Dura Europos, coins, mosaics, and lamps, are too few and too exotic in nature to further much argument for map consciousness. ⁶ Thus the written itinerary, more common and widely used than itinerary maps (as even Dilke is ready to concede), ⁷ emerges as the major source of evidence for geographical depiction. Why should the Romans’ reliance on written or verbal geographical information trouble us so, when in the ninth and tenth centuries the Vikings discovered, explored, and settled Iceland, Greenland, and North America without compass or map, instead receiving their sailing directions from written accounts and sailors’ lore? ⁸

Three recent studies by scholars investigating map use in early modern Europe suggest that mapping as we know it actually began, long after the fall of Rome, as a response to the demands of the modern nation-state. David Buisseret calls the beginning of map use in the fifteenth [End Page 620] century a change “which amounted to a revolution in the European way of ‘seeing’ the world.” According to him, maps as we think of them came to be developed and used to meet the needs of “modern” government under the direction of pioneering ministers. ⁹ J. W. Konvitz explores this theme for France, focusing in particular on Louis XIV’s revolutionary minister Colbert. Much of the attitude that maps are an administrative necessity, expressed by Claude Nicolet—“But to govern it, it must be known, measured, and above all drawn”—first originated with Colbert. ¹⁰ Moreover, Geoffrey Parker traces the origins of strategic map use in the west to the need of Spanish armies in the early modern period for cartographical depiction of the “Spanish Road.” ¹¹

If these scholars are correct about the origins of conventional cartography, then it follows that the ancients, despite their cleverness, had no practical interest in maps. Frequently, the lack of clarity in most ancient geography has led us to conclude that maps would have been necessary where none seem apparent, or even to infer map use when measurements or descriptions based on shapes are given. ¹² But when we turn to archaeological evidence or to itineraries and periploi, we find that the ancients often used roundabout routes when a shorter and many times easier way was available. ¹³ How is it possible to explain such discrepancies other than that the ancients “saw” their world differently? They had a purpose in writing about geography much...