The History of Information Graphics

Lesson 4
- Greeks, Romans and the early Christianity

General conclusions

• Lack of Greek and Roman examples
• Christian, medieval copies
• Geometry
• Ptolemaic system of the world
• Development in logic, taxonomy, classification

Fragment of a papyrus copy of Euclid's Geometry Book II, c100?, University of Pennsylvania

Tabula Peuntingeriana - Roman road map. c150?, copy from the 13. century

Tabula Peuntingeriana - Roman road map. c150?, copy from the 13. century

Ptolemy's World Map according to Ptolemy's Geographia. Reconstruction, 15. century. 

Ptolemy's World Map according to Ptolemy's Geographia, c150. Reconstruction, 15. century. 

Plan of St. Gall, ca800.

Canon tables

London canon table, Eusebius, 6. century, London, British Library

Garima Gospel, canon table, c. 600, Abba Garima Monastery, Ethiopia

Book of Durrow,  7. century, Dublin, Trinity College

Book of Kells, 9. century Dublin, Trinity College

Chronological tables

Parian marble chronicle, BC 260k. Oxford, Ashmolean 

Eusebios of Caesarea - Chronicon, Jerome's latin translation, 450c.

Peter of Poitiers - Chronological table of the kings of Judea - Historiae Compendium, 1210c, British Library

• Aristotle - Kategoriai/Organon
• Porphyry - Isagoge / Porphyrian tree
• Boethius
• Eusebius
• Ramon Llull - Arbor scientiae

The Tree

The "Temptation" seal - Akkadian period, 2200BC

Homa

Fusang tree, China, 2nd century BC

Adam and Eve, Catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter, Rome, 3d century

Forms, shapes and method

Metaphoric

System

Boethius - Arbor Porfyriana, 520k

Ismeretlen - table of relatives - Codicis Theodosiani Libri Sexdecim 4r MS Lat. 4410, Bibliothéque Nationale, 850c

Ekkehard - Karolingian dynasty, 1120k

Isidor of Seville - Etymologiae, copy, 1136,

British Library

Floreffe Bible, 1170c, British Library

Codex Beatus - Genealogy of Christ 1180c Metropolitan Museum of Art

Peter of Poitiers - Compendium Historiae

Harvard Houghton Library
1200-1250

Joachim of Fiore - Liber Figurarum, 1202k

Ramon Llull - Arbor Scientiae, (1250k) 1505

Speculum Theologiae - Ten commandments, Tree of the Virtues and the Vices  fája, Yale University, Beinecke Library, 1300k

Speculum Theologiae - The tower of wisdom, Yale University, Beinecke Library, 1300k

Trajan's column, Rome, 107-113