The Roman Empire, just after the Punic Wars, rested on three
continents... but this line is insufficient to convey the vast
differences in season, geography, and costs from one part of the
empire to another. Enter ORBIS.  (The following is awesome
enough without an ominous lead-in paragraph.)  Meet ORBIS. It’s
an interactive, historically almost-accurate map of the Roman
Empire circa 200 BC or, as Stanford likes to call it, a
‘Geospatial Network of the Roman World’. It was put together by
Walter Scheidel, Elijah Meeks and Jonathan Weiland at Stanford
University with the help of a group of IT specialists, some
students, and a Digital Humanities Grant.  Its breathtaking
detail and customizability make for one exhilarating experience
as your navigate from city to city, to promontories, through
mountain passes, atop camels, aboard boats, astride horses, and
make your way from Luguvalium in the north-west to Singara in
the south-east… Granted, it won’t be anything like making this
journey for real through Europe,