City
Roma
Rome · Rom
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Roma, the city of Rome, is written in red beside a large figure holding a globe and a sceptre. Older research took the figure for an emperor; today it is read as a personification of the city itself. Twelve roads leave Rome on the map, while the thirteenth, the road to the harbour at Portus, has neither its line nor its figure. On the Via Ostiensis the map breaks its own careful pattern around Rome: with a river and a large unnamed drawing crowding the space, the road's name sits above the line and its figure, sixteen, below. The Roman writer Pliny called Rome the head of the world.