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Description

Scarce Map of the Roman Roads, covering Southern Italy.

Striking map, in the form of a long scroll with Rome at the far left and the roads extending through southern Italy and Sicily. French text both above and below the map.

The map is based upon an original document found by Konrad Celtes in a library in Augsburg, which came into the hands of Konrad Peutinger and later Marc Velser who published an engraved copy of the map in 1591 at Aldus Manutius in Venice.

The map he was copying was probably based on the one commissioned by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (c.64-12 BC). Pompeii is marked despite being obliterated in 79 AD.

Ortelius later published a complete set in 1598, called the Peutinger Tables, which is how they became popularized.

The original manuscript copies still survive. The family sold the manuscript in 1714, eventually coming to Prince Eugene of Savoy, from whose estate it was purchased by the Habsburg Imperial Court Library, where it is still stored. It is fortunate that Ortelius had copied it: the manuscript had suffered degradation at the hands of the less-than-scholarly owners in the following years and now is not nearly as legible as it was in Ortelius' time.