[HN Gopher] OmnesViae: Roman Routeplanner
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OmnesViae: Roman Routeplanner
Author : desindol
Score : 215 points
Date : 2022-08-04 08:06 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (omnesviae.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (omnesviae.org)
| tonoy wrote:
| Grustaf wrote:
| The to field should be replaced with a single option, Roma.
| wink wrote:
| According to my Latin teacher, "urbs" would've been enough.
| There's only one important city, after all. (cf. 'ab urbe
| condita')
| uoaei wrote:
| Zaragoza was once known as CAESARAVGVSTA. Seems like the modern
| name follows directly from slight mistranslation and drift from
| the original name over the years.
| defrost wrote:
| Original Roman era route planners are interesting in their own
| right.
|
| 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.
| garblegarble wrote:
| Thank you for the jumping off point, fascinating! I discovered
| Tabula Peutingeriana[1]. Is this what you were referring to or
| are there other layouts to be found?
|
| 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 :-)
| defrost wrote:
| Yep, Tabula Peutingeriana is easily the best known example
| and the tip of my tongue that I failed to mention by name :-)
|
| 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.
| ramcle wrote:
| I would love a videogame that uses something like this for a
| map of the game world.
| shefmichelle wrote:
| There is also this, which is similar: https://orbis.stanford.edu/
| HeckFeck wrote:
| This will come in handy for when someone finally cracks time
| travel. Time to brush up on the old Latin. And divest from all
| holdings in Pompeii.
| beardyw wrote:
| Interesting to see the roads extended beyond Hadrian's Wall.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| The Antonine Wall is further north than Hadrian's, so the
| empire did reach further north, at least until 162 CE:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall#Abandonment
| fbn79 wrote:
| Magnifico Lavoro!!! Would love to see the exact street map and
| not direct line from point to point. The feature to see
| mountain/river crossing on the direction tab is fantastic.
| notpushkin wrote:
| This might be an interesting trip planner demo to make. I'm
| currently playing around with DigiTransit [1] (a journey planning
| app based on OpenTripPlanner, mostly used in Finland I think),
| curious if it would allow this level of customization.
|
| [1]: https://digitransit.fi/en/developers/
| LaMarseillaise wrote:
| For anyone curious, the name could be translated to "All Ways".
| demetrius wrote:
| The program is fun, but I'd like it more if it spelled place
| names correctly.
|
| 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.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Why would you say that? U and J are not used in classical
| Latin, they're mediaeval innovations, presumably this website
| deals with the Rome of classical times?
|
| Back when Lutetia was called Lutetia, it was written with V.
| demetrius wrote:
| > U and J are not used in classical Latin, they're mediaeval
| innovations
|
| 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. LvI 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.
| Grustaf wrote:
| We are not using cursive here, so Roman cursive is not all
| that relevant.
|
| 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.
| demetrius wrote:
| > But I would conclude that the textbox should only use
| capital letters
|
| 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.)
| rob74 wrote:
| ...but a fault-tolerant search could still accept both. Yeah,
| I know, that's one of those features that users expect these
| days but isn't that easy to implement...
|
| One more improvement: instead of just drawing straight lines
| between the cities, they could follow the actual Roman roads,
| which are mostly known.
| Grustaf wrote:
| If it was up to me the from field should only work with
| ablative forms, and the to field should require the
| accusative form, but the author is probably more broad
| minded.
|
| Definitely agree about the roads!
| tremon wrote:
| It still wasn't written with -ci though, which also seems to
| me a medieval innovation (in French, it was written as
| Lutece).
|
| 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?)
| Grustaf wrote:
| Sure, I'm not defending "Lvteci", no idea what that is
| supposed to be, but I'm vehemently against using "u" and
| "j" for Classical Latin, it hurts my eyes. I wish those
| letters were never invented at all!
| demetrius wrote:
| > it hurts my eyes
|
| Looks like almost all Latin texts hurt your eyes, then.
| Grustaf wrote:
| No, why? I only read monumental inscriptions, that's
| where Latin shines. For everything else give me Greek or
| nothing.
| demetrius wrote:
| > I only read monumental inscriptions, that's where Latin
| shines
|
| 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.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Yeah being pedantic is hard work, but it's worth it.
|
| 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!
| demetrius wrote:
| > Btw "demetrius", my other pet peeve is Latin endings on
| Greek words and names.
|
| 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
| Constituicao, 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)
| demetrius wrote:
| > they either should accept the original Roman spelling of
| Lvtetia
|
| 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:
| LVTETIA (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/i and I/i. Using
| Lvtetia is like using Lvtetia, 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!
| Grustaf wrote:
| > original Roman cursive spelling
|
| 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.
| lkschubert8 wrote:
| I'm really curious about the whole paragraph about Lvteci. My
| Latin studies are way behind me so pardon me if I'm getting
| things wrong but I thought a) there was a point in time where
| the latin alphabet only had uppercase characters and b) U or u
| was not in the alphabet at the time and uppercase V was always
| the vowel and the consonant.
| nescioquid wrote:
| There are two things going on: one is the script, and the
| other is orthography.
|
| 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).
| caractacus wrote:
| The map misses a road which heads out from Cambridge to
| Colchester that shouldn't be difficult to spot given that it's
| called the 'Roman Road'. Even the Romans should be able to spot
| that.
|
| https://frrfd.org.uk/archaeology-and-history/roman-road/
| toyg wrote:
| It only includes roads and locations mentioned in two sources:
| the Peutinger map ("tabula Peutingeriana" [0]) and the
| Itinerarium Antonini [1]. Clearly you've found where those
| sources lacked precision.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Itinerary
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I think it only lists the roads that were noted in this
| particular route scroll.
| leoc wrote:
| The routefinding also seems to be seriously imperfect. This
| journey from London to Tripoli takes the land route around the
| whole of the Eastern Mediterranean coast:
| https://omnesviae.org/#!iter_OVPlace427_TPPlace292
| dafman wrote:
| It also seems to be missing part of Ermine Street from London
| up to Royston and then to Peterborough
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Interesting. I live in a barbarian part of the Netherlands north
| of the Limes boundary, so no Roman roads for me.
|
| 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.
| ygra wrote:
| Would be fun to (a) put the historic roman names for places in
| OSM, and (b) create map tiles that mimic the maps that are
| shown when clicking on the places. Would make for a much nicer
| presentation than the default OSM tiles (which aren't exactly
| meant for this sort of thing).
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Well, lots of places already have name:la (Latin) tagged, and
| since it is a dead(-ish) language it often matches the
| historic name Romans used, but you'll get edge cases like
| _Lugdunum Batavorum_ which has been used as the Latin name of
| Leiden since the renaissance, but which is now considered to
| have been the name of nearby Katwijk. So the tag
| name:la=Lugdunum Batavorum is correct for Leiden (it is
| called that in Latin), but arguably not historically correct
| (it 's not the same Lugdunum the Romans knew).
| przemub wrote:
| I guess the author is German and so his config spilled over?
| ygra wrote:
| It's probably the map tiles from openstreetmap.de, which show
| names preferably in German. Unlike the tiles from
| openstreetmap.org, which show names in the country's native
| language by default.
| rubenbe wrote:
| Similarly, I find it weird that there is no direct route from
| Lille/Tournai to Rotterdam through Belgium. There is a huge
| detour over Maastricht.
|
| Maybe this part of Belgium was not sufficiently under Roman
| control and too unsafe to travel through.
| Bayart wrote:
| As far as I can recall, this part of the Lower Countries was
| still mostly swamps.
| tremon wrote:
| There were still plenty of Roman settlements to the north
| of Brussels, so it's a bit curious that Belgica itself
| seems hardly populated. Maybe because of that tiny town
| that kept on resisting Roman rule?
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Would have been nice to include the forts and settlements in
| Scotland around the lowlands.
|
| All in all a cool idea though!
| meigwilym wrote:
| Very interesting. I was brought up in Caernarfon, or Segontium
| (Segontio on the map, although I've never seen that spelling
| before).
|
| 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
|
| https://pilgrims-way-north-wales.org/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarn_Helen
| toyg wrote:
| _> It 's a strange feeling to walk along a route that has been
| walked for milenia._
|
| 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.
| toyg wrote:
| It would be fantastic if it included a time estimate too. They
| could use the De Bello Gallico as reference for expected speeds
| (maybe toned down a little, to account for Julius Caesar's well-
| known self-aggrandizing tendencies).
| schoen wrote:
| It does include one! Like "Fere LXIII dies".
| undoomed wrote:
| Very interesting map, but it is weird that there are no Roman
| roads through modern day Belgium.
| rvieira wrote:
| Really fun. The Latin text gives me "What If?" alternative
| universe vibes of the Roman Empire having online maps :)
| jaza wrote:
| In 5 stadia take the 3rd ostium on the circus.
|
| You have arrived at your terminus.
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