gilius Posted July 14, 2011 Report Share Posted July 14, 2011 A few books I briefly checked claims there were more than 400 towns of Roman Italy not including stopping stations, etc. Surely this cannot be accurate? Unfortunately I've not been able to find any maps showing the principal towns; does anyone know where one may be found on the Internet? I would guess there was only something like 90-100. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GhostOfClayton Posted July 14, 2011 Report Share Posted July 14, 2011 I've just added links to the sub-regions on the Italia entry on Wikipedia. That should make it easy for you to access each and tot up the total. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melvadius Posted July 14, 2011 Report Share Posted July 14, 2011 I may be wrong buyt I don't think there are links to any areas actually giving total numbers of towns as has been requested. On a general point the descriptions of what constitutes a 'town' is often fairly relative and from what I have read a lot of places which were considered settlements of note in the Roman period in modern parlance would probably hardly rate being large villages. Wikipedia seems to only list 83 towns and cities here however it only specifies two of these 'towns' as being on Sicily. If you read anything about the Punic Wars that is a ridicleously small number for the number of Sicilian 'towns' which were variously cited as being founded/ fought over/ captured/ destroyed and/or rebuilt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gilius Posted July 14, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 14, 2011 A town needs to have a Forum-Basilica, but if remains are not known, it should be documented as a tribal capital or inscribed as a municipia or colonia from somewhere (documentary or achaeologically). I'm going to check the Peutinger Map. This should show all the towns and include some large villages (small-towns), but even then it shouldn't come anywhere close to the quoted 400. I wish there was a translation of the Italian section of the Ravenna Cosmography online somewhere... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maty Posted July 14, 2011 Report Share Posted July 14, 2011 A town needs to have a Forum-Basilica, but if remains are not known, it should be documented as a tribal capital or inscribed as a municipia or colonia from somewhere (documentary or achaeologically). I'm going to check the Peutinger Map. This should show all the towns and include some large villages (small-towns), but even then it shouldn't come anywhere close to the quoted 400. If you are looking at maps, try also the Shepherd pair - for general purposes these are as detailed as any sane person should need, and should also go some way towards helping with your more specialized purposes. http://images.nationmaster.com/images/motw/historical/shepherd/italy_ancient_north.jpg http://images.nationmaster.com/images/motw/historical/shepherd/italy_ancient_south.jpg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gilius Posted July 16, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2011 BINGO! It's an absolute miracle that I've found this map after searching for 5 hours... I can confirm that town maps of Roman Italy are *extremely rare* compared with, say, Iberia, Gaul and Britain. c.L = coloniae Latinae c.c.R = coloniae civium Romanorum sonstige Stadt = "other City" The above terms are not even mentioned in the book "Cities of Roman Italy", which leads me to suspect that the author (Guy D. L. B.) doesn't know the basics when it comes to this subject. Was Herculaneum not a town then? Only a "small-town"/village? I wonder how accurate the map is, as there might be a few towns missing still... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GhostOfClayton Posted July 18, 2011 Report Share Posted July 18, 2011 (edited) Nice - where did you unearth these gems? Edited July 18, 2011 by GhostOfClayton Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gilius Posted July 18, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 18, 2011 Nice - where did you unearth these gems? Check this out... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maladict Posted July 18, 2011 Report Share Posted July 18, 2011 Nice - where did you unearth these gems? E-M Lackner, Republikanische Fora. Great reference work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gilius Posted July 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2011 Unfortunately the above map may still be incomplete as it's missing a number of colonies shown in the other maps. Also, all the above sources are missing Forum Alieni as well as other towns like Falerri Novi, so I guess we could be passing the 200 mark and getting closer to the 400? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maladict Posted July 23, 2011 Report Share Posted July 23, 2011 Unfortunately the above map may still be incomplete as it's missing a number of colonies shown in the other maps. Also, all the above sources are missing Forum Alieni as well as other towns like Falerri Novi, so I guess we could be passing the 200 mark and getting closer to the 400? Of course the maps don't show all settlements, they're not meant to be as they are maps of Roman colonies. There are plenty of places missing. Forum Alieni obviously isn't on the map as nobody would know where to put it the first place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gilius Posted July 24, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 24, 2011 Of course the maps don't show all settlements, they're not meant to be as they are maps of Roman colonies. They don't show all settlements (we've got the Barrington Atlas for that), but I would expect them to show all Colonia and Municipia. This work was completed a long time ago for Roman Britain, but all the other countries seem behind in terms of Roman scholarship. I was reading a book called Cities of Roman Africa, which is so vague it's untrue, and of course there is no proper town map available. You know there is a big difference between a town and village/vicus (small town) or stopping station? London didn't naturally develop into a big Medieval settlement; it was officially re-founded as a town/burgh by Alfred the Great in 886 with it's own Guild and town hall (Guildhall), otherwise it would have been against the law for so many people to be trading in that spot. Likewise when London was a Roman town it would have had an administrative hierarchy--the nearest settlements (vici) had none! It's blasphemous to show towns and villages on the same map without differentiating the status between them where known IMO; it's ignorance at it's highest form! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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