LECTURES 99 



use of them ; and hence the names generally given to maps hy the 

 Romans of ^'ilineraria pic/a," traveller's pictures. The Roman gen- 

 erals were provided with these itineraria, which accompanied them to 

 the battle-field. They may have been often destroyed by barbarians 

 in the conquered camp ; they have shared the f\ite of their owner in 

 distant lands ; they have gone down with the navigator in the 

 stormy waves. Besides, whoever has seen a maltreated sea-chart 

 may easily guess how many such must have perished at all times 

 under the rough hands of heedless mariners, even without a ship- 

 wreck. 



Again, the nature of the materials, to which the precious lines of 

 maps were committed, has often been the cause of their rapid destruc- 

 tion, as in the case of the maps which the Emperor Charles the Great 

 and King Roger of Sicily ordered to be executed on solid silver plates. 

 These silver maps were soon divided among a rapacious soldiery, and 

 the laborious composition destroyed. Even the copper and brass plates 

 upon which, as we learn, the Greeks sometimes engraved their maps, 

 were too tempting a material for the rapacity and recklessness of 

 conquerors. What a treasure for a Roman soldier the brass globe qS> 

 Archimedes ! By cutting it in two he could make at once a coupkoft' 

 camp-kettles ; and with the copper-plate on which Eratosthenes had'' 

 pictured his cosmographical speculations, he could at least mend his . 

 helmet or shield. 



Indeed, it is not easy to find out a material fur maps which is 

 strong and indestructable, and, at the same time, useless enough for 

 other purposes, to have a chance of escaping the spoilers hand. Put 

 your drawings on lead, the least valued of metals, and the soldiers 

 will melt it into bullets ; inscribe them on sheepskins, yet that will 

 not save your work — parchment is useful for making cartridges as well 

 as for binding books_, and even should they escape the shears, jowr ' 

 antiquated drawing may be washed off and the skins used for keeping 

 a grocer's account, or some equally valuable purpose. Stones with old 

 inscriptions upon them are just as good for building as rude rocks 

 without them. 



That I do not speak of mere possibilities, I will here mention a fact 

 or two of the sort. A part of that famous map of the Roman empire 

 called the Peutinger Table was discovered bound up, by the monks^ 

 as a fly-leaf in an old book in the city library of Treves. Auotlier 

 portion of a Roman map, representing Spain, and cut upon a stone, 

 was discovered in the abbey of St. John, near l)ijon, in France, where 

 it had been built into the wall. Even paper, that wonderful and al- 

 most sacred material, to which Plato and Shakespeare, as well as 

 Newton and Humboldt, have confided their ideas, is so convenient for 

 wrapping up little articles of purchase, that hundreds of most ralua- 

 ble document3 have gone to destruction in that way. 



Many maps have been constructed only as illusti'ations of books, 

 without which they were properly regarded as unintelligible. They 

 were bound up with the book, and their fate was consequently much 

 influenced by the manner in which this was done, owing to the varying 

 customs and fashions of the book-binding art. In the olden time, when 

 books were generally made in large folio, the maps received the same 



