So I found these maps recently of the Roman Empire. The first has some interesting details about the Roman provinces in general while the second is far more detailed and carefully constructed. If you’d like to see the general spread of the Romans overtime look at the video below by EmperorTigerstar, a map creator on Youtube.

Roman Provinces

The first map details the imperial and senatorial provinces of the empire (the provinces where either the emperor or senate had the right to appoint governors). The main distinction between the two was that there weren’t many legions in the senatorial provinces, reducing the risk the senate would use them to revolt. The unique feature is that the map has information on each province and the neighboring peoples at different parts of the empire.  

Roman Empire Provincial map

Travel Map

The second map is more interesting to me. This is a detailed map of the entire empire, showing all of the major cities, provinces, roadways, geographical information, sanctuaries, forts, settlements and a host of other information. As far as detail is concerned I haven’t seen something as complicated as this in a long time. When you visit the map zoom in on Rome. As the heart of the state, it has some of the most complicated data to offer, heavily surrounded by most of the things listed on the legend. The search bar works in much the same manner as Google Maps with tags indicating the results but without information on the different points save for a link to a different map. For that you have to zoom in and investigate yourself. This is where I believe they could add an additional feature of showing the nearest landmarks, elevation, perhaps some info in the future. If you’re looking for a place in the empire that’s hard to find you should definitely start here.

High Quality Roman Empire map

Update 6/7/17      This link has died

Roman Metro

This is another map of Roman roads connecting all of the major and minor cities in the empire created by Sasha Trubetskoy.

Roman Roads

Here is a sample:

Don’t you want to ride around here? Just be careful, commutes take months.

The Google Maps of Rome

A massive Google Maps-esqe map of the Roman Empire, it allows you to plan routes throughout the empire, factoring in:

• Route Duration
• Weather
• Pricing
• Mode of Travel
• Routes+Connections

The map was created by Stanford professors Walter Scheidel and Elijah Meeks to more accurately simulate traveling by taking into account more substantial factors than just the distance.

ORBIS

Roman Forts

Here is yet another map but this one is different when compared to the more general maps. It shows every Roman fort throughout the empire as well as the zone of the Roman response within the immediate area. The red area around the forts (represented by black blocks with black flags) shows the area within a day of travel from the forts and the yellow area shows travel which takes from 1-2 days. It is a pretty good representation of the power projection and sheer size the army had grown too but it isn’t without extra detail. Provincial borders, cities, hill forts, shipwrecks, coin hoards, disease locations, infrastructure, economic points and bodies of water along with other metrics are used to measure the ancient nation. This digital map comes from Harvard University and I encourage you to go there, play around with the map, share it with each other and on social media and make sure to tag me, Tome of Trovius, so that others can find this article as well.

http://ags.cga.harvard.edu/darmc/https://darmc.harvard.edu/map-sources

The best way to support this website is to share it and this article across social media and with your friends.

For questions or submissions contact this e-mail account:
asktomeoftrovius@gmail.com

Buy Photography, Phone Cases or Stickers! Support The Website!