Marcus Agrippa directed a mapping project in the first century that surveyed the highways of the Roman Empire from Britain to the Middle East. The completed map was carved into marble and set up near the Forum in Rome. Over the years copies of Agrippa’s map were made and improved. The Peutinger Table may be a copy from the eleventh or twelfth century of a third century, or possibly a fourth century map by Castorius based on Agrippa’s map.
     It is drawn and painted on parchment seven meters long and one third of a meter wide. It depicts the world from Britain to the Ganges. No attempt has been made to show direction or scale. Distances are written in. Towns are shown as collections of houses, while great cities are pictured as medallions. Temples, lighthouses, fortresses, significant building, and forests are also pictured.
     The map was discovered by Konrad Celtes, Maximillian I’s librarian in a monastery library. Maximillian gave it to Konrad Peutinger, the town clerk of Augsburg. Peutinger was an antiquarian and noted coin collector. He was a retainer of the Emperor Charles V, and attempted to persuade Luther to accept the authority of the Emperor in religious matters. He was also a map collector, and the Tabula Peutingeriana took its name from its new owner. It is preserved in the State Library of Vienna. The map is the subject of a detailed study by Konrad Miller, Itineraria Romana, Stuttgart: Striker und Schröder, 1916.

A computer facsimile of the map is available in Bibliotheca Augustana at
  http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost03/Tabula/tab_pe00.html  

       At the beginning of the second century A.D. the Roman Emperor, Trajan, led his legions across the Danube River to fight the Dacians and the Getians. One of his camps was called Castra Nova. The town of Pelendava grew up around the camp; the Romanian stamp commemorates the first documentary mention of the town’s name, Craiova, which had replaced Pelendava before the end of the fifteenth century. The name Craiova is Slavic for “royal city.”

     The Italian stamp shows the Via Francigena, the main road of communication between central Europe and Italy. Thousands of pilgrims traveled this road in order to reach Rome, the center of the Christian world.