Medieval History
Imagine you?re in Rome, it?s 205 CE, and you?ve got to figure out the quickest way to transport wheat to Virunum, in what?s now Austria. Your transportation choices are limited: ox cart, mule, ship or by foot, and your budget is tight. What do you do?
Enter ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. With it, you can survey the options that would have been available to an ancient Roman in that very predicament with the ease of getting directions via GPS.
Type in your starting point, destination, the goods you need to move, and the time of year. Voila! You can quickly see the most cost-effective way to transport the grain.
By generating new information about the ancient Roman transport network, ORBIS demonstrates how, more than anything else, the expansion of the empire was a function of cost.
Click here to read this article from History of the Ancient World
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Medieval History
Interactive map of the Roman Empire now online
Imagine you?re in Rome, it?s 205 CE, and you?ve got to figure out the quickest way to transport wheat to Virunum, in what?s now Austria. Your transportation choices are limited: ox cart, mule, ship or by foot, and your budget is tight. What do you do?
Enter ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. With it, you can survey the options that would have been available to an ancient Roman in that very predicament with the ease of getting directions via GPS.
Type in your starting point, destination, the goods you need to move, and the time of year. Voila! You can quickly see the most cost-effective way to transport the grain.
By generating new information about the ancient Roman transport network, ORBIS demonstrates how, more than anything else, the expansion of the empire was a function of cost.
Click here to read this article from History of the Ancient World
- Famed Roman Shipwreck Reveals More Secrets
Ancient artifacts resembling the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient bronze clockwork astronomical calculator, may rest amid the larger-than-expected Roman shipwreck that yielded the device in 1901. Marine archaeologists report they have uncovered new...
- Rome's Lost Empire, Bbc One, Review
Iain Hollingshead reviews Rome's Lost Empire, BBC One's one-off documentary in which Dan Snow uses satellite technology to identify the lost cities, amphitheatres and forts of ancient Rome. Just when you thought television had had its fill of...
- Descendants Of Alexander The Great?s Army Fought In Ancient China, Historian Finds
A recent article is examining the possibility that a contingent of soldiers from the Mediterranean fought at the Battle of Talas River in 36 BC, but instead of being Roman forces, new research suggests they may have been descendants of the armies of Alexander...
- Decline And Fall: New Book Examines How The Western Roman Empire Collapse
The Fall of the Western Roman Empire: An Archaeological and Historical Perspective is the latest book from Dr Neil Christie of the University of Leicester. The division of the vast Roman Empire can be traced chiefly to the 280s AD when the Empire, wracked...
- Ancient Roman Ship Found In Italy
A ship that sailed the Mediterranean in the days of the Roman empire has emerged from the ground at the ancient port of Rome, scientists said Thursday. Archaeologists so far have uncovered a 35-foot section of one side of the ship, the Italian news agency...