Flavio Biondo’s project of writing an Italia Illustrata was a huge and daunting task. It started in 1448, was cut short in 1453,1 taken up again over a period of several months in 1462, and, sadly, was never brought to the end which Biondo originally envisaged. His work was finally published posthumously in 1474 by his son Gaspare Biondo (Biondo 1474). Although – indeed because – Biondo was a thoughtful, experienced, and prolific writer, he faced some major challenges and unexpected problems while working on his Italia Illustrata.2 He himself points to this in his first chapter:

In the following, we analyze and discuss some of the problems related to writing a geographical or topographical treatise in premodern times. These problems especially concern the availability and usage of Biondo’s sources. In approaching the challenge, we pay particular attention to the measurement data which figure prominently in Biondo’s text.

Biondo’s Italia Illustrata is, as far as the geographical information is concerned, a mixture of different sources and literary genres. Biondo has the habit of citing his sources regularly throughout the text. They are, first and foremost, literary sources from antiquity. Among them are Ptolemy’s Geography (clearly in a Latin translation), Strabo’s Geography (most probably in Guarino’s then unpublished Latin translation),4 Pomponius Mela’s Chorography, and – because of the geographical information connected with Hannibal’s campaigns in Italy – Livy’s History of Rome. Of primary importance for the geographical framework of Italia Illustrata are Pliny the Elder’s chapters on Italy in his Natural History (III.95–131). Biondo cites – and uses – Pliny more often than any other geographical author. He even considers Pliny more reliable than Ptolemy, the ultimate authority in geographical matters in the fifteenth century.5

But, as Figure 1 and Figure 2 below show, Biondo is not shy of diverging from his Roman literary model, Pliny. His changes are not only ‘updates’ of nomenclature or historical transformation, often involving the insertion of modern towns into his text, but also concern traditionally held factual truths, like the boundaries of regions or the numbering and ordering of the Italian regions.6

Why does Biondo choose different boundaries to Pliny? And how does he do it? A key may be found in 12.1, where Biondo, when starting to describe the region of Abruzzo, drastically modifies the traditional boundaries (see Figure 3).7

Here Biondo writes of the remaining regions to be described (Samnium, Campania, Apulia, Lucania, and the territories of the Salentini, Calabri, and Bruttii). These seven regions had since been fused into a single entity called “the Kingdom” (“septem hae regiones in unicam regni appellationem sunt confusae”). The political landscape of central and southern Italy had drastically changed in the century before Biondo, and therefore so too had the organization of the different regions.8 In the same passage Biondo goes on to say:

Biondo explicitly enumerates the sources he has used in his previous chapters. Interestingly, these are descriptions – not maps – of cities and places.9 Note also that such descriptiones, i.e., literary texts, often consisting of simple lists of place names, remained popular until the eighteenth century. If one only takes into account the literature of the ‘Western’ world, the tradition harkens back to the Catalogue of Ships in Homer’s Iliad (II.494–759), if not earlier. Ancient geographical literature such as Strabo’s Geography, Pomponius Mela’s Chorography, and the books on Europe, Asia, and Africa in Pliny’s Natural History were full of lists and lacked maps, which, after all, were expensive and difficult to produce (and reproduce). As modern geographical information systems are mostly image-based (atlases, GPS systems, Google Earth, etc.), it is sometimes not easy for us to appreciate the importance of such lists and the skill of authors who compiled, arranged, and ‘narrated’ seemingly endless lines of place names.

Of course, the lists and borders in Biondo’s sources needed to be updated and organized according to contemporary (i.e., fifteenth century) administrative and ecclesiastical domains. How exactly Biondo approached this kind of updating remains unclear. He almost exclusively quotes authors from Greco-Roman and early medieval times. That he indeed makes use of very few contemporary sources can be gleaned from a passage in the Additiones correctionesque Italiae illustratae. In this passage, Biondo claims that he has prefaced the original version of his Italia Illustrata with a catalogue of the authors of his time. It was later deleted by the “perfidious bishop” (Francesco Conduler?) who brought his work – prematurely – to light (“viros aetatis nostrae in catalogum principio promissum multis in operis urbibus et oppidis a me positos”).10 As such a catalogue has not come down to us, we can only speculate about the quantity and quality of contemporary authors. Occasionally, Biondo mentions modern historical and regional studies (for example, Leonardo Bruni’s History of the Florentine People) which was surely important for his own chapter on Etruria (Tuscany) in the Italia Illustrata. It is difficult to make an educated guess as to the extent of use of contemporary sources. This is especially true for the source material outside the humanist canon of exemplary authors: travel reports, archival material, administrative documents, oral sources,11 and – perhaps – regional maps may have been used by Biondo. But, again, this falls into the realm of speculation.12

Despite the huge differences between the regions of Italy in terms of morphology, culture, and history, Biondo constructs and narrates spaces throughout his work in a rather stereotypical fashion. Of primary importance are the waterways. The larger regions in Italy are mostly shaped by the coastlines and by the rivers emptying into the sea. Quite often, rivers subdivide these larger regions into smaller units, thus also structuring the interior of the country.

The Puglia chapter at the end of Biondo’s work illustrates his method. It consists of only eight paragraphs but contains no less than 57 toponyms13 and 23 distance specifications. As we may be dealing here with a section of Italia Illustrata that has to a large extent remained a fragment, it is best suited to study Biondo’s methodology. At the very beginning14 we find an explanation for his approach:

Here Biondo explains why he feels the urge to abandon the ‘natural’ course of his narrative. And here, as elsewhere,16 we see Biondo prioritizing historical considerations over geographical ones. In the following, Biondo, like a virtual ship captain, cruises along the Adriatic coastline of Puglia to the mouth of the first river, Tifernus (Biforno), which he follows upstream. In the beginning, he only names the places lying on the one side (the right-hand side) of the river. The distances between the locations are indicated in miles, whenever they are known to him. Having arrived at the source of the river, Biondo does not ‘sail back’, now describing the locations on the other (left-hand) side of the river, but instead starts his voyage anew at the mouth of the River Tifernus.17 This ‘redeployment’ was probably induced by his source material. Having again reached the source of the river, Biondo now turns to the second Apulian river, the Fortorius/Fortore, the mouth of which is claimed to be twenty miles from that of the River Tifernus “along the coast [viginti milia passuum in litore distat]” (14.4). And once again, the virtual cruising along the river enables Biondo to enumerate the towns, castles, lakes, etc. in the interior of Puglia. This kind of narrative – which is reminiscent, mutatis mutandis, of a string of pearls or rosary – is both simple and effective.

Again, it harkens back to ancient times, when geographical authors like Strabo and Pliny employed it on a regular basis to describe regions and spaces without resorting to a map (arguably resorting instead to a cognitive map). We may call Biondo’s method ‘hodological’ (from the Greek hodós, for road, path, way),18 as the reader is left without a bird’s-eye view, i.e., without a cartographic perspective of the region, and has instead only the ‘street view’ of someone traveling virtually along a road or coastline (or any other route).

Sticking to such a ‘one-dimensional’ view has certain consequences. For one, the transmitted distances between two locations are rarely meant as linear distances, but as routes along roads or coastlines, which deviate more or less from any lines that may be drawn ‘as the crow flies’.19 Such distances, regularly expressed in miles (or rather, in steps, as a mile is defined as 1000 steps: mille passuum), are contingent to many factors, among them the length of the stride, the morphology of the terrain, the condition of roads, the currents of the waterways, the possible existence of barriers and obstacles, etc. In fact, in premodern times, when there was no practical means to measure distances between towns, distances were either calculated or rather counted in steps or recalculated based on the amount of time (normally in hours) spent walking or sailing. It goes without saying that distances in this ‘hodological’ system provide a relatively good estimation of the time required for a journey between any two points, but are difficult to use and adapt for a cartographical or geographical representation of space. In other words, depending on the context, distances can be of either a more ‘practical’ or more ‘theoretical’ nature.

Biondo is obviously aware of this intrinsic problem. For him, distances are neither geometrical lines nor simple roads. Therefore, every once in a while, he adds some qualification to his measurement data, as the following in his Aprutium (Abruzzo) chapter (14.54): “[…] these places are ten miles from Beneventum (at the points where the crossing of the rivers is possible) [absunt haec loca a Benevento (fluviis ubi expedit transmissis) decimo [sc. miliario]]”. 20

While the number of distances transmitted by Biondo is impressive in itself, he is also interested in the quality of the data. As Biondo often cites the sources of the measurement data – in nearly all instances works from Greco-Roman antiquity – this underlines his broad reading and diligent extraction from sources.21 Apparently, he pays much attention to distances throughout his work, which eventually resulted in a considerable amount of metrological information. Sometimes, he even makes an explicit effort to evaluate his data by refining his numbers with certain qualifiers like “plus/minus” (3.8). To his mind, informing the readers about the exact distances is an integral part of his endeavor. But distances are rarely simple elements of geographical information. Distances are very important for conveying a sense of spatiality.22 By using words and numbers, Biondo evokes mental images not only of the absolute and relative location of places, but also of the intervals between them and thus of the position, shape, and size of the regions described in Italia Illustrata.

For reasons explained in quite vague detail in the appendix titled Additiones correctionesque in later editions, Biondo was unable to finish the task he himself outlined in the passage cited above. Italia Illustrata has remained a torso. Out of the eighteen regions of Italy mentioned in his introduction, the last four are not treated at all. And the fourteenth region, Puglia, contains some features that suggest it was worked on hastily, not the least because, as can be seen from Biondo’s text cited above, Puglia should have come behind Lucania as regio 15.

In the following, we discuss the measurement data in Biondo’s Italia Illustrata. As outlined in the previous paragraph, distances play a crucial role in establishing a cognitive map25 of Italy in the minds of Biondo’s readers. We present some numerical tables for the whole Italia Illustrata at the outset, then analyze Biondo’s source material, and finally go into detail by looking at Biondo’s Latium chapter more closely. A summary will conclude our findings.

Figure 4 presents the toponyms and distances in Biondo’s Italia Illustrata, arranged according to the fourteen regions he describes.26 The first two columns give the number and names of the regions in Biondo’s ordering.27 As Biondo has a paragraph on the size of Italy as a whole (1.3), we have excluded four distance specifications on the length and width of Italy contained therein. On the other hand, we have included from the Additiones correctionesque the toponyms and distances for Liguria and Etruria. The third column shows the number of words for each chapter. As Paolo Pontari’s definitive “national edition” has not yet been completed, we have used Jeffrey A. White’s version of 2005–2016.28 The fourth column states the number of regional toponyms. In this, we excluded generic terms like “Italy”, “Latium”, or the “Tyrrhenian Sea”, names of locations which do not in fact lie in the described region (for example, Alexandria in Egypt, or Verona, which is mentioned in the Liguria chapter: “a Plinio Veronense”), variants of names, subcategories (for example, a church within a settlement or town), anonymous towns, and – quite often – mountains and rivers. Mountains and rivers are included, however, whenever Biondo indicates a specific ‘landmark’ in association with them, such as the source or mouth of a river, or a part of a mountain, island, or coast. In other words, we have taken “toponym” to mean “point in the landscape”. The sixth column states the number of distances in the chapter.29 Distances are defined here as the “extension of space between two points on a measured course”. The “extension” is usually expressed in a specific unit of measurement and defined by a certain quantity. “The distance from A to B is x miles” is an example of the standard phrasing used in Biondo’s Italia Illustrata. In most cases, Biondo’s mile is the traditional Roman mile, equaling, roughly,30 1.5 kilometers. This can be inferred from passages when Biondo feels compelled to make a conversion to the ‘modern’ mile31 or adds a qualification to his numerical statement, like “as today [ut nunc]”.32 That said, however, he also uses other units of measurement, like feet,33 steps,34 stades,35 or day’s journeys,36 often depending in each case on his ancient and medieval sources. In our statistics, we have not included unspecific general statements such as “in the vicinity” or “not far from” and have only included numerical distances.37

The fifth and eighth columns give the numbers of toponyms per 10,000 words in Italia Illustrata, which helps us understand how often distances appear in the text and how Biondo attempts to create a mental map of Italy.

In all, we find 297 distance specifications in the Italia Illustrata. As an average, this equates to 21 stated distances per region or a ratio of 423 words of description per every numerical distance. For the sake of comparison: Strabo’s Geography, which lends itself to comparison with Italia Illustrata in scope and form, has an average of 77 measurements of distance per country (or more exactly, 65 for the northern part of Italy and 94 for the southern), which in turn equates to a ratio of 211 words of description for every numerical distance.38 This means that Biondo conveys less than half the measured distances that Strabo gives over the same amount of words. Even if we do account for differences in language, historical period, and topic, the discrepancy is nevertheless remarkable. To our mind, it cannot be explained merely by the difference in availability of source material. In fact, the most comprehensive collection of measured distances in the Greco-Roman world, the Itinerarium Antonini or Antonine Itinerary, which contains nearly 2900 distance specifications, was indeed known to Biondo – he actually quotes it twice in his Italia Illustrata. 39 However, it remains, strangely enough, hardly exploited, if at all, in this regard. The same holds true for the eighth-century Ravenna Cosmography, which Biondo attributes to a “Guido of Ravenna” or “Guido Presbyter of Ravenna”.40 Most likely, Biondo’s approach to the topography of Italy was induced by historical rather than geographical considerations. As we have seen while discussing the changes of the regional border made by Biondo, his ‘Herodotean’ objective consists in battling against historical oblivion. Geographical exhaustiveness is not his primary goal.

We turn now to the measurement data in Biondo’s chapter on Latium, which contains 53 distance specifications.41 Several of them are taken from Strabo’s Geography.

In the Latium chapter, Biondo claims to follow – among other authors like “Augustus”,42 Vergil,43 and Livy44 – both Strabo, “peritissimum hunc vetustatis scriptorem” (3.2), and Pliny, who allegedly drew upon his predecessor.45 The last statement is pure guesswork on Biondo’s part. Nowhere in his Natural History does Pliny mention Strabo and according to modern scholarship it is questionable that he even knew his writings.46

While Biondo names more than 200 toponyms and ethnonyms in this chapter, 143 can be defined as toponyms of Latium.47

Here is a list of the toponyms in Biondo’s Latium chapter (3.3ff.):

The sheer number dwarfs the toponyms we find in the descriptions and catalogues of Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny, Mela, Livy, and others. In fact, the sum of toponyms found in Biondo’s Latium chapter is much higher than the sum of all the ancient sources combined.

It goes without saying that the list of toponyms presented in the previous paragraph shows only cumulative and average numbers per chapter. The actual distribution of toponyms in the text is rather uneven. Biondo has a propensity of assembling consecutive toponyms into clusters, without explanatory text. According to Ottavio Clavuot, “[...] nearly two thirds of the place names are given as uncommented clusters”.48

The structure of such conglomerations of toponyms, hereafter termed “clusters”, reveal what type of source Biondo may have used:

Especially the latter may have a geographically random sequence of names, their structure dominated by other considerations such as date of acquisition, economic importance, or similar principles.

For Latium we find four clusters.49 They are all related to the ancient roads (viae), which Biondo intends to follow, by declaring:

Interestingly, Biondo does not inform his readers that he has inherited the “new method” of presenting locations “on”, “near”, and “between” from the Greek geographer Strabo. In Book V of Geography, Strabo, an ardent admirer of Roman craftmanship, writes as follows:

Why does Biondo choose to pass over this fact in silence, given his fondness of citing Strabo as his main authority throughout the Latium chapter?

In 3.19, after “narrating” the coastline of Latium until Sinuessa and some settlements along the River Liris, Biondo claims that he can longer use the “traditional method”, “Ariadne’s thread”, as employed in his description of the previous regions (i.e., using the rivers from their mouth and heading upstream as his ‘unspooling’ guide in describing the inland regions). Instead he declares his intention of following the three viae Appia, Latina, and Tiburtina, which lead to the River Liris and the towns of Sinuessa and Caieta.

As one may guess from the titular endpoints of these three roads (which are in fact rivers!), Biondo, like his predecessor Strabo, is unwilling to entirely give up his proven ‘river method’. For example, in 3.33, when describing locations along the Via Tiburtina, he writes as follows: “To the left of the River Aniene in these mountains is first a town called Vicovaro […]. Higher up are the little towns of Portella and Cantalupo. Then there is Riofreddo on a steep hill […] etc.” Obviously, even the “new method” was unable to solve every problem.

The three ‘surrogate rivers’ (i.e., the ancient roads first skirting the Pontine Marches [Via Appia], then following the River Sacco [Via Latina], before heading eastwards [Via Tiburtina]) were separated by the western Monti Lepini and the eastern Monti Ernici respectively.50 In the case of the central valley, the route taken was the Via Lavicana of the Itinerarium Antonini, but in other documents and in other times or sections it was variously known as the Via Latina or Via Casilina. East of the Monti Ernici, Biondo follows the Via Tiburtina which changes its name beyond Tivoli/Tibur to Via Valeria and still further east in the vicinity of Lake Fucino to Via Claudia Valeria. Biondo is perfectly clear by saying that he is unable to follow these ancient roads, due to their general disintegration and changes to the landscape since ancient times. In fact, in Biondo’s time, the Via Appia was replaced by an Appia Pedemontana, following the foothills of the Monti Lipini.51

The first cluster, consisting of eight towns and settlements, apparently follows the fifteenth-century road from Palestrina to Frosinone:

This is indeed a collection of ‘interior towns’ mostly located in the Monti Ernici and surely lying, on our map, all “to the right of Zinazani [Genazzano]”, as Biondo says. Except for Frosinone, Biondo’s selection occupies the foothills dominating the valley and following the ancient road at a distance of roughly eight kilometers. The wrong sequence between Acutum (modern-day Acuto) and Trivilianum (modern-day Véroli) is difficult to explain. It may be a simple lapsus calami.52 We cannot trace it to either a map or an itinerary as a single source. Both types of records occasionally feature two switched points but rarely see-saw back and forth between several.

The second cluster closely follows 3.29, consisting of nine towns and settlements:

This cluster appears to be a disorderly complement to the previous selection, which is difficult to trace to an itinerary as a possible single source.53 Searching for a (hypothetical) use of historical records, we have not found any statistically relevant information on ‘family records’ of any kind in this selection of towns. During Biondo’s lifetime, only Alatri, Vico, and Ripi belonged to the Colonna family.

The third cluster of six towns occurs in 3.31:

As we have seen, Biondo’s Italia Illustrata makes (at best) sporadic use of maps; neither does Biondo require it of readers to use a map alongside his text. Following le tre corone of the fourteenth century, Biondo wishes to generate in his readers’ minds a more or less complete image of Italy.56 The line of thought which Biondo expects his readers to follow, is, in the end, an imagined itinerary, based on a mental map or cognitive script. For this purpose, he does not feel the need to rely on a map (certainly not for his description of Latium, although he uses or claims to have used them for other regions), and instead employs the dominant master-model of premodern times, the hodological view. Those rare passages where he does employ a bird’s eye view change neither his basic approach to topography nor the fundamental construction principle of his narrative.

Common sense geography in the broadest sense is concerned with a premodern ‘geometric’ model of reality which is intuitive and therefore non-mathematical. It works surprisingly well with approximated directions and distances because it can ‘crystalize’ into real locations and meeting places (like Stonehenge, for example) by way of a sequence of remembered and memorized landmarks.

Seen like this, a river or a road is a reassuring sequence of landmarks leading to sites of reverence (like Rome or Jerusalem) as well as being of military or mercantile nature. In this sense, Biondo appears to stand at the turning point in history, solidly anchored in traditional and proven usage while collecting the proud but non-mathematical heritage of the past. The future lies ahead of him – already in sight, but still vague and fuzzy: Ptolemy’s purely mathematical model, rendering the surface of the earth to scale and defining its respective elements in pairs of geodesic coordinates (i.e., longitudes and latitudes). In the absence of sufficiently precise instruments and methods to properly locate the landmarks in mathematical terms, this task would eventually take several centuries to complete.