Tabula Peutingeriana

The Tabula Peutingeriana (Latin for "The Peutinger Map"), also anglicized as Peutinger's Tabula and the Peutinger Table, is an illustrated itinerarium (road map) showing the cursus publicus, the road network in the Roman Empire. It is kept at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The original map upon which it is based probably dates to the 4th or 5th century and was itself based on a map prepared by Agrippa during the reign of the emperor Augustus. The present map is a 13th-century copy and covers Europe (without Spain or the British Isles), North Africa, and parts of Asia (the Middle East, Persia, India).

Archetype

The Tabula is thought to be the distant descendant of a map prepared under the direction of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the friend and ally of Augustus. After Agrippa's death, that map was engraved on marble and placed in the Porticus Vipsania, not far from the Ara Pacis. That early imperial dating for the archetype of the map is also supported by Glen Bowersock, based on numerous details of Roman Arabia that look entirely anachronistic for a 4th-century map. Therefore, he also points to the map of Vipsanius Agrippa. This chronology is also consistent with the presence on the Tabula of Pompeii, which was never rebuilt after the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.