OmnesViae: Roman Routeplanner
omnesviae.org
omnesviae.org
Not so much 2D projections on a plane (as seen in the link), more 1.5D scrolls akin to railway | subway route graphics.
The road scrolls unroll to reveal parallel lones, left and right, horizontally departing a central hub, with waypoints for destinations marked along the way.
Early examples of network diagrams collapsed to a near linear projection.
1a: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana
1b: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana#/media/Fi...
Edit: I also noticed that the Tabula Peutingeriana is linked in the header of the site, clearly I should be more observant :-)
There are others that I have seen in the British Library collection and some in Rome but I'd be struggling to name them - I had a lot of exposure to experts in History of Maps back in the 1980s|1990s when I was working bridging wet film photogrammetry and digital mapping, sadly my main focus was programming, mathematics, lens geometry, unification of existing maps under WGS84.
All the examples I've seen have that subway diagram look, albeit freehanded, and clearly were all part of a tradition of road maps in that related style.
I've tried building road from Lutetia to Olyssipo (which are totally correct spellings), and the program didn't accept it. The program wants me to type... "Lvteci" and "Olisipo".
Okay, Olisipo is a possible variant, but what in the world is Lvteci?
There is absolutely no reason to use "v" in "Lvteci". Before U/V were separate letters, sometimes V was used for uppercase, u for lowercase; sometimes v was used in the beginning and the end of the words. But "Lvteci" makes absolutely no sense.
At the very least the program should treat U/V and I/J as same letters when typing the names. Or maybe make the search field all-caps and replace u's with V's.
Back when Lutetia was called Lutetia, it was written with V.
I think they either should accept the original Roman spelling of Lvtetia, or the various modernized forms Lutetia, Lutece and Lutecia. But accepting only "Lvteci" seems like an anachronism to me.
(edit: that said, when I search for "lugd" I do get search results for LVGDVNO, so maybe the search got improved?)
Lvtetia is not "the original Roman spelling".
The original Roman cursive spelling is: https://imageup.ru/img224/3989875/roman-coursive-example.png
The original Roman square capitals variant is like this: LV́TÉTIA (too lazy to make an image; I hope you have a serif typeface, it's closer enough)
The cursive eventually evolved into "lutetia"
The square capitals eventually into "LVTETIA"
Later, people decided to use both versions together, using letters like L, V, T, E in the beginning of sentences and names; and letters like l, u, t, e elsewhere.
What happened in mediaeval times is that people decided added lowercase v and uppercase U. So, Lvtetia is ahistorical: it should be Lutetia or LVTETIA or lutetia, since lowercase v is a later invention.
(Similar thing happened when Turkish people devised their Latin script: they divided I/i into I/ı and İ/i. Using Lvtetia is like using Lvtetıa, because Romans didn't put dots over their I's.)
> (edit: that said, when I search for "lugd" I do get search results for LVGDVNO, so maybe the search got improved?)
Yes, I think it has been improved. Thanks!
This I think indicates that you misunderstand what "spelling" means. Casing is unrelated to spelling. "Lvtetia" and "LVTETIA", and indeed "lUtETia" are using the same spelling.
> Later, people decided to use both versions together, using letters like L, V, T, E in the beginning of sentences and names; and letters like l, u, t, e elsewhere.
This only happened much later, and does not concern Classical Latin.
Looks like almost all Latin texts hurt your eyes, then.
Even with monumental inscriptions, you'd need to carefully filter them to make sure you only read old ones. The newer ones frequently include U, e.g. I like this little poem in a park in Coimbra: http://bloguinho.casa/img/2017/01/nemus-litterae-old.jpg (the park also includes more poems, which is pretty cool). Too bad we don't have such Latin poems in Porto, where I live now.
Btw “demetrius”, my other pet peeve is Latin endings on Greek words and names.
I’m actually going to Porto next month, good to know I will be safe from bastardized Latin!
You seem to choose pet peeves that are opposite to mine! I don't like Greek word declinations in Latin (why write Leopolin if you can write Leopolim?) and I like the i/j, v/u distinction in Latin.
> good to know I will be safe from bastardized Latin!
You should stay away from the house 1255 on rua de Constituição, then (it has this: https://imageup.ru/img91/3990079/porto.jpg — although it's the only text in Latin I've seen here so far)
Leopolim? As in the accusative form of Lvov?
Feel free to send me more tips to the email in my profile!
They were totally legit variants of V and I, especially in cursive. Cursive U/V was much closer to U than to V.
When cut in stone, V was easier to cut, and stone tends to be preserved better, so we see V more often. But at the same time, people would write U when writing.
What happened in mediaeval times is that people decided that U and V are two different letters. But both U and V existed long before that, they just were two forms of the same letter.
And since our lowercase letters are based on cursive forms, it makes much more sense to use u in the lowercase. Which is what modern sources that don't distinguish U and V do (e.g. Oxford Latin dictionary would not use "U" in uppercase and "v" in lowercase).
> Back when Lutetia was called Lutetia, it was written with V.
Well, it was also written with E and not e, and T and not t, but you seem to have no problem with that.
Lvtetia makes absolutely no sense. Lvᴛᴇᴛɪᴀ might be OK, it's at least consistent (albeit hard to type). But Lvtetia is a Frankenstein's monster: you freeze the evolution of V into u, but keep evolutions of other letters intact.
I sort of see what you mean here though:
"And since our lowercase letters are based on cursive forms, it makes much more sense to use u in the lowercase"
But I would conclude that the textbox should only use capital letters. When I wrote that it should say "Lvtetia", I obviously meant "LVTETIA". Minuscules are not different letters, they are variant forms, so by using modern capitalization I didn't mean to imply anything about how the program should do it, bicameral writing is a modern fad.
That would make sense, sure.
> Minuscules are not different letters, they are variant forms
Just like U and V, J and I in some varieties of Latin.
(The fact that Unicode encodes them differently doesn't mean anything: Unicode also encodes A and Ａ, fi and fi differently.)
One more improvement: instead of just drawing straight lines between the cities, they could follow the actual Roman roads, which are mostly known.
Definitely agree about the roads!
The classical orthographic system uses consonantal "u" and "i" -- both are used for both the vowel and the consonant. A later orthographic system uses "v" and "j" when "u" or "i" are used as consonants. Today, you'll find a dog's breakfast of orthographic systems, sometimes in the same text (e.g. some current texts use consonantal "u", but do not use consonantal "j" and strikes some people as barbarically inconsistent).
In the classical world, you had engraving and handwriting. Handwriting was done in a Roman cursive script and looks quite different than anything you've probably seen. Engraving was done in majascules and written "U" looked like "V", just to totally confuse everyone after the middle ages (and because V is probably easier to engrave than U).
The spelling of "Luteci" seems to have been adpoted directly from the Tabula Peutingeriana, where "Lutecia" (a late form of "Lutetia") is missing its final "a" (see the little image, when clicking on Paris in the map).[1]
"U" and "V" could be used interchangeable in Latin throught most of its history.[2] Typically a text uses either "U" or "V" exclusively. Using "U" for the /u/ sound and "V" for the /w/ sound in the same text starts to appear in the late Middle Ages.[3]
But even today a lot of scholarly editions prefer not to normalise an ancient text to "modern" spellings. In this case they typically use "V" throughout (I cannot remember seeing any that uses "U" throughout). The programme thus conforms to an established philological convention.[4]
[1] "Luteci" seems to be a rather odd variant indeed. But if you type into the input box "Lutetia" it lets you select "Luteci". You may also use "Lisboa" to get "Olisipo". But yes, the programme primarily uses the spelling of its sources and does not include a sophisticated synopsis. But I can also understand that including such a feature for all these place names, each of which probably has half a dozen variants, would be a major undertaking in itself.
[2] "V", which developed from "Y", was the older form. The graphem "U" starts to appear in Late Antiquity. There had been an earlier attempt of emperor Claudius himself, to introduce an upside-down Digamma (Ⅎ) for the /w/ sound, which did not prevail. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudian_letters
[3] In many modern languages the letter "U" for a /w/ sound is preserved in some names, such as "Suetonius" (the first "U" is a /w/ sound), and in connection with "Q" as "QU", a combination of /k/+/w/ sounds. In English this combination is even used for words of Germanic origin, such as "Queen"; in contrast to e.g. Swedish "kvinna" ("woman").
[4] In this aspect the programme deviates from its source. The Tabula Peutingeriana itself, which is a late 12th century copy of of a presumably Roman original, uses a medieval script with a "u" graphem troughout.
I've walked and run part of the Roman road along the north Wales coast. Much of it is the old pilgrim's path that goes from Treffynon (Holywell) in the east to Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island) off the tip of the western Llyn peninsula. It's a strange feeling to walk along a route that has been walked for milenia.
But a shame that Sarn Helen isn't there, but I know there isn't much evidence of its existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segontium
I was literally born on the via Emilia, a clogged artery of Northern Italy connecting Milano to Rimini on the Eastern coast. Obviously, loads of towns and cities have since developed all along that road. A significant amount of important roads all across Europe are similarly old, people just don't know or notice.
Kinda weird how the OpenStreetMap base map behind is configured to show German names first in all of Europe before the local names (Straße von Dover for the Strait of Dover/Pas de Calais). I would expect the Latin names.
Maybe this part of Belgium was not sufficiently under Roman control and too unsafe to travel through.
You have arrived at your terminus.
All in all a cool idea though!
For example, the article "Roman highway uncovered between Antwerp and West Flanders" was published in 2021-03-17. It says, "Archaeological excavations in Adegem near Maldegem, West Flanders, have uncovered traces of a Roman road linking Antwerp to an important Roman camp. The existence of the road was known, but now for the first time there is archaeological evidence. The Roman road between Antwerp and the West Flemish municipality of Oudenburg has been discovered during archaeological excavations carried out as part of the construction of a supermarket...." https://www.thebulletin.be/roman-highway-uncovered-between-a...