Travelling in Ancient Rome
As we all know, the Roman Empire was huge. But getting to A from B didn’t just depend on distance. There were huge environmental constraints, such as rivers, seas and mountain ranges. The clever guys at Stanford have produced a website: ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World which “reconstructs the time cost and financial expense associated with a wide range of different types of travel in antiquity” 751 locations have been modelled, and 14 types of transport, including foot, porter, ox cart, army on the march and horse relay). The website allows you to plug in location, time of year, mode of transport and destination. So travelling from Roma to Londinium in January by ox cart would take 79 days and cost 1711 denarii per passenger!
What a great resource!
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