The site is a really interesting tool to understand the socio-economic geography of the ancient Roman Empire. It offers not only the general information about how the cities are connected but also the fastest/cheapest/shortest way to get from a certain place to another, considering a type of transportation and its cost, similar to the contemporary google map. This cartogram helps users to understand how geography would be like for ancient Romans. Users can select a start point and destination, and calculate the distance, cost, and duration of the selected trips, even considering weather conditions (seasons) and type of transportations.
Meanwhile, the Flow section vividly shows the most used paths and helps users to easily understand the geo-economic connectivity of the imperial cities, especially between the mainland and colonies in the Empire. When the Flow section is compared to the Network section, it seems like Romans unsurprisingly preferred the cheapest routes as their main paths. This interactive map is indeed helpful for researchers (additionally by offering a download option), but also an interesting toy for history-geeks.
I like the way that they offer isochrone and isophoretric maps and cartograms of the whole Roman world as a pop-up screen in the beginning so that users can grasp the whole geographic understanding before toying with each selection. Different ways of describing the routes are a bit confusing, but it is due to my limited experience of reading different geographical maps. But it could have been better if they could translate the cost, written in Roman currency (denarii) into contemporary sums. Also, I did not quite get the meaning of the use of the different colors in the dash lines in the bottom box when calculating the routes by duration/distance/donkey/wagon/carriage.
The site is a really interesting tool to understand the socio-economic geography of the ancient Roman Empire. It offers not only the general information about how the cities are connected but also the fastest/cheapest/shortest way to get from a certain place to another, considering a type of transportation and its cost, similar to the contemporary google map. This cartogram helps users to understand how geography would be like for ancient Romans. Users can select a start point and destination, and calculate the distance, cost, and duration of the selected trips, even considering weather conditions (seasons) and type of transportations. Meanwhile, the Flow section vividly shows the most used paths and helps users to easily understand the geo-economic connectivity of the imperial cities, especially between the mainland and colonies in the Empire. When the Flow section is compared to the Network section, it seems like Romans unsurprisingly preferred the cheapest routes as their main paths. This interactive map is indeed helpful for researchers (additionally by offering a download option), but also an interesting toy for history-geeks. I like the way that they offer isochrone and isophoretric maps and cartograms of the whole Roman world as a pop-up screen in the beginning so that users can grasp the whole geographic understanding before toying with each selection. Different ways of describing the routes are a bit confusing, but it is due to my limited experience of reading different geographical maps. But it could have been better if they could translate the cost, written in Roman currency (denarii) into contemporary sums. Also, I did not quite get the meaning of the use of the different colors in the dash lines in the bottom box when calculating the routes by duration/distance/donkey/wagon/carriage.