Mapping the world under Theodosius II

Under the Emperor Augustus and his successors, the Romans advanced the study of geography in order to create both a practical and a mental map of their imperial world, that is – to quote the striking expression of the late Claude Nicolet – to construct an ‘inventaire du monde’. Although evidence for similar activities in late antiquity appears (at least at first sight) scant, the elaboration of Roman geographical knowledge seems to have been a matter of some concern: in part, as a result of what might be termed a ‘democratization of culture’ and, in part, as a result of the progress of information systems which allowed a deeper sensitivity to geographical and human landscapes. Geographical texts and maps could also be used for educational purposes. In a speech delivered in 297/298 in support of the restoration of the Maenianae (the rhetorical schools in Autun destroyed when the city was sacked in 270 by the usurper Tetricus) the orator Eumenius offered a vivid picture of the schools’ porticoes decorated with a map of the oikoumene. Further, in its porticoes let the young men see and contemplate daily every land and all the seas and whatever cities, peoples, nations the unconquered rulers restore by affection or conquer by valour or restrain by fear. Since for the purpose of instructing the youth, to have them learn more clearly with their eyes what they comprehend less readily by their ears, there are pictured in that place, as I believe you have seen yourself, the sites of all locations with their names, their extent, and the distances between them, the sources and terminations of all the rivers, the curves of all the shores, and the Ocean, both where its circuit girds the earth and where its pressure breaks into it.