[Tzeentch]

Originally Posted by Sindri

There are enough recognizable reconstructions of TL2 maps that it seems ridiculous that there were none in the first place. I could see some of the reconstructors making a new map and calling it an old one but all of them? Even if they improved it during the reconstruction it's hard to see the maps becoming non recognizable. I don't really think drawing to a precise scale is necessary for recognizably or mapness.

-- Are you confusing maps OF the Roman/Greek world with maps created IN the Roman/Greek world?

-- What reconstructions are you referring to? Even the Severan Marble Plan isn't actually truly to scale (probably cobbled together from smaller surveys), and I'm not sure when the last time even the claim of it having a scale was actually tested. Might be something to check later, most ancient historians just eyeball this stuff and repeat citations from decades ago.

-- To be more exact I'm talking about scale maps or even a true wayfinding map. Not cadastral or artistic or religious. You don't need any graphics to replicate a subway map/itinerary info and there's no extant document that can be dated to the imperial era that I'm aware of off-hand that is anything but a list of places and distances between them. No graphics at all, even simplified relationships like on the Peutinger Table. In GURPS terms: no Cartography skill was used.

Inevitably rivers and things will be added in to make the schematic look nicer but if you aren't taking a ship it doesn't much matter if they are distorted.

-- The second you step off the road it matters.

Trying to move troops strategically by means of written records would be awful. Sure you could do routine routes easily but trying to, for example, go to a place as quickly as possible while avoiding one army and trying to not be caught in unfavourable terrain would just be so much easier when do and do well with a map that it seems absurd that well organized empires did not produce them for their generals.

-- Roman history is replete with examples of people having zero knowledge of what was where or what was going on, even a fairly short time after they had a military campaign there. Even a learned scholar like Galen records being surprised by entire cities existing that he hadn't heard of before he showed up in the area.
-- It probably was a huge pain in the ass, with lots of reliance on local informers and guides and the hugely unreliable narratives of people who had been in the area sometime in recorded history who bothered to write about it and make it available (e.g. Homer and Caesar being as good as it got for many people with regards to knowledge of the Med and Gaul).

Likewise it seems far easier to make an unusual sailing trip with a map to help then relying on memory and written records.

-- Sure, but it's that line of thinking that led to the "of COURSE they had maps we just haven't well ... found any mention or remains of ones ... ever" :) Heck you still see this all stated matter-of-factly on Wiki and so on.

-- I actually think it's more interesting trying to work out how they managed the empire without these kinds of resources. The administration was pretty diffuse (I mention this briefly in the new Pyramid issue about Roman law enforcement) and locally managed so that alone probably removed a lot of problems, but that sort of runs counter to the "centrally administered" thesis of imperial government. It also makes discussions of "grand strategy" by Luttwak and others rather moot. It's an interesting puzzle to work on for a Roman- rather than Medieval-based game though, right?