The art of making scaled maps and plans seems to have vanished with the Babylonians around the 8th century BCE, since no scale maps have been found dating from the end of that Empire--until the Romans. From the Assyrian Empire, which followed the Babylonian, we have only picture maps, not scaled maps, appearing on the bas-reliefs found in Assyrian lands
between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. We find in the Greeks a paucity of any kind of topographical mapping at all; and while there is a tradition of topographical mapping with the Egyptians, there is no discovered
instance of scaled mapping or plans.
However, in the Roman Empire we have clear evidence, as shall be shown, of scale maps and plans. They had a tradition of picture maps which in actuality were used to show the collected volumes of the surveying
treatises. After the first century CE a parallel system was apparently developed related to the surveyed maps. It seems that in the Roman Empire the surveyors themselves were responsible for drawing these maps/plans, and drawing them to some kind of scale.
The treatises tell us that it was the surveyor who was responsible for laying out lands for tillage while at the same time determining the ownership of the units surveyed. They then prepared a plan forma) with copies to both the local administration and the imperial archives. There are two treatises which have been found, Frontinius and Hyginus, both of which were written in the late first or early second century CE. These treatises indicate that the plans should be engraved on bronze and should
act as a permanent record.
Only one group of plans of this sort is known to us at present. It was a plan carved in stone and comes from the city of Orange (Arausio) in modern-day Provence. A few carved fragments have long been known, but between 1949 and 1955 many more carved stone pieces were found--so many in
fact that it was possible to arrange the 443 pieces recovered into three different such plans. Apparently each of these stone plans were affixed to a wall and was of a significant size. Plan B, the one best represented by the recovered pieces, is estimated to have been eighteen feet high and twenty-three feet long, and made up of a minimum of four rows of stone tablets.

(1)

Figure (1) is one of the fragments. It is carved in marble and reflects a plan of fields near Orange. These plans were apparently laid out by the centurianation method and completed in the late first century CE. There
are two vertical lines down the center of the fragment delineating a main axis of the survey. Two roads cross it diagonally, following either bank of a small stream with an island in it.

(2)

Figures (2) and (3) show a much more ambitious plan, also carved on marble, also probably erected on a wall. This was the plan of the city of Rome and is known as the "Forma urbis Romae. It was of enormous size for a scaled plan, some 42 feet high and 60 feet long, drawn to a scale of 1:240. It was made up of a total of 151 tablets arranged in eleven rows.

(3)

All that remains of this map is 679 fragments and drawings of a further thirty-three fragments from the sixteenth century, since lost. The above figures show Rome as it was around 203 - 211 CE. The Forma, which was on display in a public place, is extremely detailed and shows virtually all of the physical features. The plan is remarkable for the period due to its general accuracy and cartographic sophistication.

(4)

(5)

Figures (4) and (5) are scaled plans which show that the Roman surveyors were capable of constructing maps of great complexity to a consistent scale. The above figures are the only surviving fragments of two carved scale-plans by Roman surveyors. They clearly belong to the same tradition
as the third-century plan of Rome (figures (2) and (3), while differing in just a few details. Figure (4), which was discovered in Rome, shows private dwellings with the owners names inscribed on the fragment. Figure (5), from Ostia, appears to be of a workshop area; the carved letters appearing on the plan may be either a numbering system of the city blocks or a measurement notation.
Figure (6) is the last known map drawn in the tradition of the Roman surveyors. It is a map which has been greatly simplified. It contains the Latin place names translated into English. The plan appears to be of
a monastery complex drawn in the year 816-817 for Gozbert, the Abbot of Gall in Switzerland. The author of the work is thought to have been Heito, the Bishop of Basel and the Abbot of Reichenau. The purpose of the map is obscure. The drawing seems to have been made at Reichenau, and it ended as a scale-plan. The plan uses many of the Roman surveyors symbols, but it also departs from the strict outline ground plans by picturing trees rather than using dots as the Roman surveyors did. There are several other commonalities, but many marks of difference as well. The design was drawn to a scale of 1:192.
The union of surveyor and map-maker was restored during the Roman Imperial period, as it had been previously achieved by Mesopotamia some two thousand years before.

References:

• P.D.A. Harvey, "The History Of Topographical Maps, Symbols, Pictures, and Surveys," Thames and Hudson, London, 1980.
• John Noble Wilford, "The Mapmakers," Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1981.