who used him as a source and in turn served as main source on the Near East for Ptolemy (Cary 1956: 130–134). Cary suggested that Maes’s journey might have been earlier, in the Augustan period under the auspices of Agrippa, when the way through Parthia was clear and Roman interest in geography and the far-east trade were both high, but the evidence for this is inconclusive. A more recent study (Heil and Schulz 2015: 74) points out that Maes himself probably did not travel, but reported measurements taken by his employees. Marinus produced a world map and accompanying commentaries before 110 CE, and Ptolemy (fl. 120–150 CE), as with Strabo’s treatment of Eratosthenes, based his Geography on Marinus’s work, adding various criticisms and corrections (Ptol. Geog. 1.6ff.; cf. Berggren and Jones 2000: 23–25).
Unless a geographical text is explicitly associated with an expedition it is difficult to determine whether geographical writers actually traveled the lands they describe or relied on other reports. A few sources from the later Roman period do show that new itineraries and maps were produced for and as a result of travel in the Near East. Several seventh- to twelfth-century manuscripts provide the texts of the Itinerarium provinciarum Antonini Augusti and Imperatoris Antonini Augusti itinerarium maritimum, two lists of land and sea routes around the Roman Empire for the third century CE, colloquially called the Antonine Itinerary. The land itinerary originated with the expedition of Caracalla (M. Aurelius Antoninus) to Egypt in 214–215 CE, based on the longest route listed in the text, from Rome to Hierasycaminos, Egypt via Asia Minor and Syria, and subsequent emperors added routes as was needed, at least until Diocletian in the 290s (Cuntz 1929: iv–v; Dilke 1985: 125; Löhberg 2006: 7ff; for the route from Rome to Hierasycaminos (now under Lake Nassar): ItAnt 124,8–162,4). A few routes are provided for the Near East, including the Syrian leg of the long Rome-to-Egypt route which passes through Tarsus, Mopsuestia, Alexandria ad Issum, Antioch, Laodicea, Byblos, Berytus, Tyre, Sidon, Caesarea, Raphia, Pelusium (in addition to many other smaller cities), and on to Alexandria (ItAnt 145,6–154,5 (Löhberg)). Inland the itinerary is divided into several shorter routes between major centers: Germanica through Zeugma or Samosata to Edessa (ItAnt 184,1–185,3 and 188,7–189,5 (via Zeugma), 186,1–187,1 (via Samosata)), Antiochia to Emesa (ItAnt 187,2–188,3), Carrhae to Hierapolis/Bambyke (ItAnt 192,4–193,1), Cyrrhus to Emesa (ItAnt 193,2–194,6), Eumari through Damascus and Scythopolis to Neapolis (ItAnt 195,9–197,4), and from Neapolis through Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem) to Askalon on the coast (ItAnt 199,11–200,3). A pilgrim itinerary from 333 CE, the Itinerarium Burdigalense (Codex Parisinus 4808), delineates another route along the coast from Antiochia to Caesarea, then inland through Scythopolis and Neapolis to Jerusalem (Geyer 1898: iv–viii; ItBurg 581,4–589,6 (Cuntz)).
The Peutinger Table conveys similar information as the itineraries but in visual form. It is a remarkable map of the Roman Empire drawn upon a scroll 22 feet (672 cm) long and no more than 13 inches (33 cm) high and composed of eleven parchment segments (Figure 3.1). The most recent study identifies the extant map as a late Carolingian (c. 1200) copy of a Diocletianic original (Talbert 2010: 83–84, 136). It depicts the roads and cities of the later Roman Empire, not in a geometrical projection akin to Eratosthenes’s or Ptolemy’s maps, but rather as a conception of the world with Rome at the center and Roman infrastructure highlighted, while land masses are compressed and stretched out of proportion. Segments 8 to 11 of the map depict the Near East: Palestine and Syria run along the bottom of segments 8 and 9, Antioch occupies a prominent position at the right side of segment 9, and Commagene and Mesopotamia run across segments 9 to 11.11 The Stadiasmus Maris Magni (Codex Matritensis 121) lists the harbors along the North Syrian coast, some of which appear on the Peutinger Table, including Balanea, Paltos, Gabala, Laodicia, Seleucia, and Alexandria ad Issum (Müller GGM I, 472–476, §§129–153).
Figure 3.1 Near Eastern section from the Peutinger Table. Freely downloadable at https://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/index.html, Map B, TP2000seg9 (detail).
The late-Roman itineraries show a significant continuity in the conception of geographia from the Hellenistic bematists, where the landscape of the Near East is made comprehensible by marking places and stations along a web of routes (cf. Parker 2001: 67; Salway 2001: 26). The Peutinger Table seems to fit in this mode, since it presents a thorough map of the same itineraries, yet its geographical form is baffling unless we understand how its original presentation was intended to impress upon viewers the centrality of Rome, the cohesion and civilized nature of the empire, and its Tetrarchic rulers’ detailed knowledge of their domains (Talbert 2010: 147–152). Its predecessor in purpose and form – if not cartographic projection – was Agrippa’s world map (Nicolet 1991: 102–103). Though we now have only later visualizations of Ptolemy’s Guide to Drawing the World, we do know that ancient geographers produced maps and debated for many centuries over how best to project the globe as a geometrical and political entity, the philosophical side to geography which is necessary to fully contextualize the sources for the Near East.
Philosophical Geographies
Writing geographia, like all intellectual pursuits in Greco-Roman antiquity, had its basis and its purpose in philosophy, and geographical theories and methods evolved in step with philosophical developments, as noted by Strabo at the outset of his work (1.1.1). This much was recognized in Agathemerus’s Survey of Geography (§§1–2), a brief historiography of pre-Ptolemean geography from Anaximander onwards. Early on, the Milesians mapped the earth in order to comprehend the nature of the cosmos and its motive forces, and their search for a reasonable governing order set the field for subsequent cartographic projections, arrangement of the continents, and studies of human inhabitants by region (Clarke 1999: 42–43). Later, the Peripatetics (see Shipley 2011: 17–18, 2012; Stevens 2016) under Aristotle and Theophrastus prioritized data collection and the summarization of what was and could be known about the world, emphasizing measurements, periploi, cataloging of peoples and places, and map-making, as evidenced by Theophrastus’s maps (pinakes) of places traversed by explorers (Diogenes Laertius 5.51: “the maps, in which are the circuits of the earth”). Scholars at Alexandria, such as Eratosthenes and Strabo, benefited from its repository of theoretical texts and pragmatic records. Taking a cue from their colleagues in literary criticism, they sought to establish comprehensive and authoritative geographies rooted in axiomatic wisdom, sometimes at the expense of observations of actual landscapes (Roseman 2005: 28–31, 39). Strabo (2.5.1) asserts that mathematical principles and astronomy are more reliable than on-the-ground observations of a landscape, citing a traveler on the Babylonian plain who when relying on local “notions” is ignorant of his true position on the earth, versus the geographer who is always oriented in space regardless of whatever the natives believe about his location. Ptolemy (Geog. 1.1.5–6) took a more temperate position regarding visual representations, arguing that world cartography requires mathematical skill, but regional topography (or “chorography”) is best done by an artist (graphikos anēr ).
Differing Methodologies
Even with cutting edge theory, geographical writers were still constrained by the empirical data, though Strabo and others severely criticized any sources whose methods and measurements were less than satisfactory. Their handling of material tended to treat geographia as a physical science or as part of historia, the enquiry into human experience in time, space, and culture (Clarke 1999: 28–29). Both approaches employed theory and logic as well as practical observation, whether theoretical physics and measurements or political principles and ethnography (Roseman 2005: 29–30). Most geographical writers used both approaches in turns. For example, Hecataeus’s Periodos gēs and Genealogiai (or Historiai) were part of the same intellectual project and cover similar topics (Clarke 1999: 60–62), and Herodotus (4.36–40) used his research on the peoples of Asia to dispute earlier cartographers’ ideas of a circular earth divided evenly