Communicating Through Maps

This chapter considers the conceptual foundations of Roman map-making and worldview, and finds that instead of representing the earth as accurately as was possible at the time, the few surviving maps depict, and glorify, Roman rule of the larger part of the inhabited world. In their own distinctive ways the colossal Marble Plan of the city of Rome and the elongated Peutinger world-map were each costly signals. A sense of Roman worldview can also be recovered from geographical portable sundials.