Emily Albu offers a new approach to the Peutinger map. In her Introduction (1–17), A. initiates the reader into the debates surrounding the map. She describes the document, outlining its main characteristics, including roughly 2,700 place-names, about 140 peoples, 90 regions and various different drawings (so-called vignettes) together with the schematic representation of the main landscape elements, such as rivers, mountains, seas and lakes. A. notes that many historians have seen the Antonine Itinerary as the main source for the Peutinger map, but she also points out that the Itinerary does not use as many symbols or vignettes (6).

Ch. 2 (19–29) (‘Roman Roads and Roman Perceptions of Space’) offers a brief description of the roads and milestones and their importance for the Roman Empire. A. outlines the unifying rôle of the roads, and the awareness of some Roman emperors (most pre-eminently Augustus) of the importance of these routes for the unity and consolidation of conquered territories.

The fundamental idea of ch. 3 (31–58) is the connection that A. proposes between the original and the surviving thirteenth-century copy of the Peutinger map. A. suggests that such a map, depicting the vast road network of the Roman Empire, together with cities and other features, would have been perfect for the Carolingian kings to justify their authority over a great empire — as the Romans did before them: ‘the Peutinger map that we have reflects an agenda appropriate to the ideology of Carolingian rulership’ (46). In other words, A. emphasizes the propagandistic purpose of such a map, though she has serious doubts that the map survived from the Tetrarchic period (following the dating proposed by Richard Talbert, Rome's World: the Peutinger Map Reconsidered (2014)) until c. 1200 (47–8). A. thinks that at this time, due to the great interest of the Carolingian rulers in antiquity, the Peutinger map was copied — or perhaps created (49, 51, 54) — in a monastery, most likely at Reichenau. A key argument for A. is the presence of two names, SILVA MARCIANA (Black Forest) and SILVA VOSAGVS, the only two forests represented in the document, along with three medieval toponyms SVEVIA, ALAMANNIA and FRANCIA which demonstrate, in A.’s view, a good knowledge of that region (across the Rhine, close to the Vosges mountains). ‘These anomalies suggest a Carolingian (or later) hand at work in creating or emending the medieval map’ (53).

For A., the absence of military elements in the map suggests the private production of the itineraries which served as sources for the (original) mapmaker (56–9). In my recently published book (F. Fodorean, Pannonia, Dacia and Moesia in the Ancient Geographical Sources (2016)), I reach the opposite conclusion: that, at least for these three provinces, the roads represented in the Peutinger map are, in fact, the first military roads built by the Romans, in comparison with the greater density of short routes listed in the Antonine Itinerary. I agree with A. that no vignettes of forts are represented on the map, but all the settlements along the Pannonian, Dacian and Moesian frontier are in fact military installations and almost all of them are marked with their toponyms.

In ch. 4 (59–72) (‘Christian Maps and the Peutinger Map’), A. compares the Peutinger map with other medieval creations — the Hereford map (c. 1300), the Ebstorf map (c. 1300), the map of Matthew Paris (c. 1200–1259) and the Gough map of Britain (1355–1366) — to explore connections between these cartographic representations. A. concludes that only a few Christian elements were included in the Peutinger map, because it was designed ‘as an imperial response to Christian affirmations of knowledge and power’ (72).

In ch. 5 (73–93) (‘German Emperors, Crusades, and an Imperial Map’), A. hypothesizes that the Peutinger map might have been ordered by a member of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, possibly Frederick II (1194–1250), son of Henry VI. ‘It is tempting to conclude that a long struggle against an autocratic papacy provoked a German prince to commission an imperial Roman map for display as part of his arsenal of propaganda for the ancient rights of Roman emperors’ (89). However, this is only a general assumption, difficult to argue directly. ‘Finally, we cannot rule out the chance that a workshop or scribe, moved by the beauty and antiquity of a fading Roman map, made a reproduction simply to preserve a venerable relic’ (90).

In ch. 6 (95–117) (‘Images and the Medieval Map’), A. discusses the representation of the three major vignettes (Rome, Constantinople and Antioch) and of other cities (those depicted with surrounding walls: Aquileia, Ravenna, Thessalonica, Nicomedia, Nicaea and Ancyra), linking the particular pre-occupations for such depictions with the importance of these cities (especially those from the East) during the twelfth century. Finally, in her Conclusion (119–22), A. focuses on the main feature of the Peutinger map — the roads — emphasizing that the sources of the original maps were Roman itinerary lists. These roads were important, according to A., for the medieval mapmaker, because they were perceived as ‘signifiers of Romanitas and the secular imperium’ (121).

All things considered, this book proposes an alternative (and refreshing) approach to the Peutinger map, different from the classical ones, focusing on the image of the German emperors, who wanted to justify their conquests and the unity of their empire using the most famous example of all, the Roman Empire, with its roads, cities, temples, harbours and baths. Questions still remain about its origins; but A. is certainly right to point to the importance of understanding the Peutinger map's medieval afterlife.