_Map-Making among the Romans._--We learn from Cicero, Vitruvius, Seneca, Suetonius, Pliny and others, that the Romans had both general and topographical maps. Thus, Varro (_De rustici_) mentions a map of Italy engraved on marble, in the temple of Tellus, Pliny, a map of the seat of war in Armenia, of the time of the emperor Nero, and the more famous map of the Roman Empire which was ordered to be prepared for Julius Caesar (44 B.C.), but only completed in the reign of Augustus, who placed a copy of it, engraved in marble, in the Porticus of his sister Octavia (7 B.C.). M. Vipsanius Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus (d. 12 B.C.), who superintended the completion of this famous map, also wrote a commentary illustrating it, quotations from which of Ammianus Marcellinus of Antioch (d. 330), Pliny and others, afford the only means of judging of its character. The map is supposed to be based upon actual surveys or rather reconnaissances, and if it be borne in mind that the Roman Empire at that time was traversed in all directions by roads furnished with mile-stones, that the Agrimensores employed upon such a duty were skilled surveyors, and that the official reports of the commanders of military expeditions and of provincial governors were available, this map, as well as the provincial maps upon which it was based, must have been a work of superior excellence, the loss of which is much to be regretted. A copy of it may possibly have been utilized by Marinus and Ptolemy in their compilations. The Romans have been reproached for having neglected the scientific methods of map-making advocated by Hipparchus. Their maps, however, seem to have met the practical requirements of political administration and of military undertakings. Only two specimens of Roman cartography have come down to us, viz. parts of a plan of Rome, of the time of the emperor Septimius Severus (A.D. 193-211), now in the Museo Capitolino, and an _itinerarium scriptum_, or road map of the world, compressed within a strip 745 mm. in length and 34 mm. broad. Of its character the reduced copy of one of its 12 sections (fig. 5) conveys an idea. The map, apparently of the 3rd century, was copied by a monk at Colmar, in 1265, who fortunately contented himself with adding a few scriptural names, and having been acquired by the learned Conrad Peutinger of Augsburg it became known as _Tabula peutingeriana_. The original is now in the imperial library of Vienna.[19] [Illustration: FIG. 5.--A Section of Peutinger's Tabula.] [Illustration: FIG. 6.--The World according to Cosmas Indicopleustes (535).]