New Map of the Roman Empire - John Speed

The 1676 map of the “Roman Empire” is a late 17th-century work by the English cartographer John Speed, published in London by Thomas Bassett and Richard Chiswell within the atlas “A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World”. It is not an archaeological map, but an erudite reconstruction of the imperial extent, reflecting the antiquarian and political interest of Restoration England towards Rome as a model of universal power. The empire is represented at its greatest expansion around the Mediterranean, with a rich Baroque decorative array: cartouches, views and allegorical figures celebrating Roman order and, by analogy, modern imperial ambitions. The map, intended for a cultivated and collecting public, translates Rome's historical memory into an image rather than a precise philological reconstruction of ancient borders.

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