The Roman mile or mille passus ("thousand-pace") consisted of the left foot
hitting the ground 1000 times. The ancient Romans, marching their armies through
uncharted territory, would often push a carved stick in the ground after each 1000 paces.
Well-fed and harshly driven Roman legionaries in good weather thus created longer miles.
The distance was indirectly standardised by Agrippa's establishment of a standard Roman
foot (Agrippa's own) in 29 BC, and the definition of a pace as 5 feet. An Imperial Roman
mile thus denoted 5,000 Roman feet, which is about 1,481 metres. All roads radiated out
from Rome, some 50,000 miles of stone-paved roads, and at every mile was placed a
milestone carved with a Roman numeral, so you always knew how far away you were.
Text source: http://www.imperium-romana.org/peutinger-map.html
On the Peutinger Table some distances are compressed, while others
are expanded. Image above - the southern half of the Italian Peninsula
spans across this section and the Mediterranean appears no wider than
a river.
The link below provides an
opportunity to scroll through
all eleven panels.
opportunity to scroll through
all eleven panels.
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