Immortality can be achieved in many ways. The Peutingers were a wealthy and respected family in sixteenth-century Augsburg, but under other circumstances they would hardly be remembered today outside their native Bavaria. However, by chance Konrad Peutinger (1465–1547) acquired a rolled-up parchment map as a bequest from a fellow Bavarian, the humanist Conrad Celtes. The document remained in the possession of the Peutinger family for two centuries; today, it is in the Austrian National Library where it is known officially as Codex Vindobonensis 326, more familiarly as the Peutinger Table or Tabula Peutingeriana.

The Tabula was probably produced in the scriptorium of Reichenau Abbey around the year 1200. As preserved, it consists of eleven sheets of parchment which were formerly glued together. On to this scroll, a map of the ancient world from Gaul to India has been copied from an older original (Spain was included on the original map, but the sheet in question was lost before the present copy was made). The map image is not drawn to a consistent scale: it has been stretched in one direction and compressed in the other, enabling the draughtsman to fit the image on to the elongated surface of the scroll, more than 6 m wide (east–west) but no more than c. 35 cm high (north–south).

For anyone studying the geography of the Roman Empire, the Peutinger Table is a key document, and this handsomely produced volume, the first completely new edition since that of Ekkehard Weber (Tabula Peutingeriana [1976]) is very welcome indeed. The book is a bibliophile's treat: attractive typography, high resolution colour printing on silk-matt paper and case-bound with bright red cloth and headbands. Inevitably but regrettably, the high level of technical quality is also reflected in a very high price.

Despite its modest title, the introductory chapter, ‘Die Geschichte der Handschrift’, offers a detailed survey of the Tabula’s research history as well as the editor's own contribution to the re-interpretation of its genesis. With the exception of E. Albu, who has argued that the archetype of the Tabula was a product of the Carolingian era (The Medieval Peutinger Map: Imperial Roman Revival in a German Empire [2014]), the consensus among historians of cartography is that the Tabula is a copy, at one or more remove(s), of a Late Roman original. Beyond this point, however, opinions diverge.

The traditional view has been that the archetype of the Tabula was derived from a wall map. In order to fit a detailed world map onto the surface of a wall, the image would obviously need to be compressed vertically if the observer were to see details or read legends at the upper edge. According to the majority view, the wall map in question can be identified as the so-called ‘map of Agrippa’, set up in the porticus Vipsania a few years after Agrippa's death and mentioned by the elder Pliny (N.H. 3.17) among other ancient authors. More recently, R. Talbert has proposed that the Tabula’s archetype was not Agrippa's map but a later wall map commissioned by one of the Tetrarchs, probably Diocletian, for the aula of his palace (R. Talbert, Rome's World: the Peutinger Map Reconsidered [2010], pp. 149–53).

R., however, rejects the received notion that the archetype must have been a wall map. As far as the east–west elongation and north–south compression are concerned, these can be easily explained by the need to fit the image within the standard writing format of antiquity, the papyrus scroll. Furthermore, R. points out that the Tabula contains information and locations which are clearly pre-Augustan (thus difficult to reconcile with the theory of Agrippa as its originator) and that some data may be derived from the lost geographical work of Eratosthenes (third century b.c.). This implies that the map image ultimately goes back to a Hellenistic world map which was copied and recopied over the centuries, through ten or more stages of transmission (pp. 20–1). At each stage, new information might be added (evidently, some of the distance data found on the Tabula have been taken from Roman road-books: p. 23), and outdated information could be deleted, though this was seldom done in a systematic fashion. By the fifth century a.d., the map had reached its ‘final’ form. An incomplete parchment copy of this late Roman version was recopied by the monks of Reichenau to create the Tabula Peutingeriana as we have it.

The function of the Tabula’s archetype is discussed on pp. 29–31. Was it intended as a depiction of the world, an imago mundi; or was it an itinerarium pictum, a two-dimensional version of the familiar Roman road-book? The inclusion on the map of intercity distances could suggest that the ‘map’ was intended for route planning rather than, or as well as, for representation. The evidence of the c. 550 vignettes marking individual locations is more equivocal. Were these supposed to indicate the importance of the place in question, or rather – like the vignettes in the Guide Michelin – the amenities which it had to offer the traveller? Systematic studies (e.g. A. and M. Levi, Itineraria picta: contributo allo studio della Tabula Peutingeriana [1967]) have failed to come up with clear answers to these questions or to explain why some places have been highlighted using elaborate, individually designed vignettes while other equally important cities have not received the same treatment. R. convincingly argues that the anachronisms and apparent lack of system in the choice of vignettes reflect how the Tabula’s information was modified, but not always updated, at each stage of recopying and transmission (p. 31).

The main part of the volume is taken up by the facsimile plates (pp. 34–99). Whereas Weber's 1976 edition reproduced one of the eleven parchment sheets on each plate, requiring a large and somewhat unwieldy format, in the present edition each plate shows only one third of a sheet (with 1–2 cm overlap to either side). As in Weber's edition, each two-page spread contains a full-colour facsimile and the identical image in greyscale serving as a reference map. Weber's edition employed a grid reference system requiring the reader to have the facsimile and text volumes open at the same time; the present edition uses overlaid hatched lines in the greyscale map to identify key locations with, in the left-hand margin, their names as spelled on the map and their modern equivalents (following German orthography: thus ‘Florenz’ and ‘Konstanza’ rather than Firenze and Constanța).

A striking difference between the 1976 and the 2016 editions is the quality and clarity of the colour images. This is due not only to the technical advances in colour imaging and printing over the intervening 40 years but also to a thoroughgoing restoration of the Tabula by Austrian restorers in the late 1970s and early 80s.

The last part of the volume contains the endnotes, a select bibliography and indexes of the ancient and modern place names. The indexes include all places highlighted on the left-hand pages of the facsimile section, but not every name on the map itself. For a complete index to the names on the Tabula, the reader must consult either the index in the second volume of the Weber edition or the online database compiled under the direction of R. Talbert (http://multimediafluids.uam.elogim.com/us/talbert).

Thanks to the attractive presentation of the facsimiles combined with the accessible style of the editor's introduction, this volume will be greatly appreciated not only by specialists but also by readers with a general interest in the historical geography of ancient Rome or the history of cartography.