Fig 1.
The provinces of interest are in orange, the Roman Empire in red. Sources: Natural Earth [31]; Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) [32]—Reprinted from AWMC database of shapefiles [32] under a CC BY license, with permission from AWMC, original copyright 2012.
Fig 2.
Transportation network of Roman roads.
Sources: Natural Earth [31]; Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) [32]—Reprinted from AWMC database of shapefiles [32] under a CC BY license, with permission from AWMC, original copyright 2012.
Fig 3.
Inscriptions with Asclepius, Apollo, Minerva, and Jupiter from the period of the Roman Empire in the area of interest.
The bigger the circle is, the more inscriptions share those coordinates. Sources: Natural Earth [31]; Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) [32]—Reprinted from AWMC database of shapefiles [32] under a CC BY license, with permission from AWMC, original copyright 2012; Epigraphic Database Heidelberg [29]; Dataset of the variables [49].
Fig 4.
Long-term legion bases in the area of interest and their distance in the transportation network to their nearest proxy for the worship of Asclepius.
Distance ranges are indicated in the legend. Sources: Natural Earth [31]; Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) [32]—Reprinted from AWMC database of shapefiles [32] under a CC BY license, with permission from AWMC, original copyright 2012; Dataset of the variables [49].
Fig 5.
Locations of soldiers engaged in the practice of making votive inscriptions from the time of the Roman Empire and their distances in the transportation network to the nearest proxy for the worship of Asclepius in the area of interest.
Distance ranges are indicated in the legend. Sources: Natural Earth [31]; Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) [32]—Reprinted from AWMC database of shapefiles [32] under a CC BY license, with permission from AWMC, original copyright 2012; Dataset of the variables [49].
Table 1.
Mann-Whitney U test results for distances from military positions and Roman settlements to their nearest place of worship of Asclepius, Apollo, Minerva, and Jupiter.
Fig 6.
A box plot of distances measured on the transportation network (in meters) for all provinces of interest from unique cult locations to military proxies and Roman settlements.
X axis shows labels for measurements with respect to individual cults. ASC (Asclepius), APO (Apollo), MIN (Minerva), IOV (Jupiter); mil (distances to the nearest military proxy), set (distances to the nearest settlement). Y axis shows the length of the distance reached in meters. Box plot: center lines show the medians; box limits indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles; whiskers extend 1.5 times the interquartile range from the 25th and 75th percentiles, outliers are represented by dots, their increased amount is caused by non-normal distribution of the data. Sources: Dataset of the variables [49].
Table 2.
Mann-Whitney U test results for distances from cult locations to their nearest military position and Roman settlements.
Fig 7.
Attested locations of physicians in the context of the military environment and its proximity to the worship of Asclepius.
Distance ranges between the Roman soldiers and the worship of Asclepius are indicated in the legend. Sources: Natural Earth [31]; Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) [32]—Reprinted from AWMC database of shapefiles [32] under a CC BY license, with permission from AWMC, original copyright 2012; Dataset of the variables [49].
Table 3.
Spearman correlation (Rs) between distances from positions of Roman soldiers to their nearest proxy for the presence of a Roman physician and their nearest cult inscription in the era of the Roman Empire.
Table 4.
Spearman correlation (Rs) between distances from positions of Roman soldiers to their nearest proxy for the presence of a Roman physician and their nearest cult inscription, based on the data that can be dated to the 2nd and 3rd century CE.