Take a trip in Ancient Rome

May 29, 2021 11:33 AM

ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model Of The Roman World is a website in which you can calculate time and expense costs needed to travel in Ancient Rome. Using land and water routes, taking time of year and geography into account, you can plan your voyage and see how long it will take, how much it will cost. It's like a AAA TripTik for 2000 years ago. [Previously, from 2012]
posted by hippybear (10 comments total)

On fast mode, I couldn't find any routes that were 50 days or more, even going from one edge to another. Pretty impressive.
posted by tavella at 2:14 PM on May 29, 2021

This is fun.

It looks like it accounts for upriver vs. downriver travel time. I can't figure out just by playing with it if the site accounts for seasonal differences to river travel. Sometimes it looks like it plans for some river routes being frozen over in winter and diverts you to roads accordingly, but I'm not sure if that's just artifact of my other travel preferences.

It's a good thing this is being done by serious people who strive for data-driven historical accuracy, because my first impulse would have been to add an Aqueduct Tubin' mini-game as an Easter egg somewhere.
posted by Avelwood at 2:26 PM on May 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Rome to Pompeii for only 90 denarii?! Impulse vacation!
posted by sixswitch at 3:14 PM on May 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Rome to Pompeii for only 90 denarii?! Impulse vacation!
Estimates vary on what a denarius was worth, and of course some things were comparatively cheaper and some more expensive in ancient Rome. Also "what a denarius buys" varied a good bit over Roman history so I'm curious what year they're assuming here.

But I've heard a good rule of thumb is to think of 1 denarius being about equal to $50 through most of the high imperial period - a day's labor from a skilled worker, with the understanding that labor was comparatively cheap in Roman times. Caesar, upon his death, doubled rank-and-file legionary pay to 225 denarii per year (which they usually supplemented with plunder).

So 90 denarii could be thought of as something like $4500 - actually pretty pricey for the average Roman.
posted by xthlc at 8:24 PM on May 29, 2021

This is really fun.

For me, it won't run properly in FireFox. Seems OK in Chrome.
posted by james33 at 6:18 AM on May 30, 2021

Also "what a denarius buys" varied a good bit over Roman history so I'm curious what year they're assuming here.

According to the "Understanding" subsection of the "About" screen in the program, they "rely on a dataset of debatable value (the price controls of 301 CE)".
posted by hippybear at 6:28 AM on May 30, 2021

I imagine what a denarius buys would depend on what a Grecian urns.
posted by fight or flight at 7:05 AM on May 30, 2021 [4 favorites]

I imagine what a denarius buys would depend on what a Grecian urns.

Fortunately there's a fairly simple Grecian Formula you can resort to (though your results may vary once they took the lead out).
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:01 PM on May 30, 2021

The average working man in Athens during the time of Alexander the Great earned about one drachma a day.

To put this in perspective, a cup of cheap wine cost one or two obols [six obols in a drachma]. A common grey mullet or an octopus would go for about four obols in the Athenian fish market, while an eel – considered a delicacy – would cost three Drachmas. Hiring a “flute-girl” for a symposium (wine-drinking party) would cost two Drachmas for the evening. A chous of common table wine (six pints) would also cost about two Drachmas, with higher quality wine of course costing much more. An amphorae could hold seven chous.

posted by kirkaracha at 5:21 PM on May 31, 2021

I'm fairly certain that Alexander The Great wasn't involved with Ancient Rome much at all.
posted by hippybear at 6:04 AM on June 1, 2021