Antonine Itinerary

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Iter Britanniarum, displayed as a road map. The plotted routes and stations are approximations. The Antonine Wall and Hadrian's Wall are shown. Iter.Britanniarum.jpg
Iter Britanniarum, displayed as a road map. The plotted routes and stations are approximations. The Antonine Wall and Hadrian's Wall are shown.

The Antonine Itinerary (Latin : Itinerarium Antonini Augusti, "Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus") is an itinerarium , a register of the stations and distances along various roads. Seemingly based on official documents, possibly in part from a survey carried out under Augustus, it describes the roads of the Roman Empire. [1] Owing to the scarcity of other extant records of this type, it is a valuable historical record. [2]

Contents

Almost nothing is known of its author or the conditions of its compilation. Numerous manuscripts survive, the eight oldest dating to some point between the 7th to 10th centuries after the onset of the Carolingian Renaissance. [3] Despite the title seeming to ascribe the work to the patronage of the 2nd-century Antoninus Pius, all surviving editions seem to trace to an original towards the end of the reign of Diocletian in the early 4th century. [3] The most likely imperial patron—if the work had one—would have been Caracalla. [1]

Iter Britanniarum

The British section is known as the Iter Britanniarum, and can be described as the 'road map' of Roman Britain. There are 15 such itineraries in the document applying to different geographic areas.

The itinerary measures distances in Roman miles, where 1,000 Roman paces equals one Roman mile. A Roman pace was two steps, left plus right, and was conventionally set at 5 Roman feet (0.296m), resulting in a Roman mile of approximately 1,480 metres (0.92 mi).

Examples

Below are the original Latin ablative forms for sites along route 13, [4] followed by a translation with a possible (but not necessarily authoritative) name for the modern sites. [5] A transcriber omitted an entry, so that the total number of paces did not equal the sum of paces between locations.

Iter XIII (Itinerary 13)
Latin ablativeTranslated possible site nameDistance
Roman (mile)Metric (km)English (mile)
Item ab Isca Calleva mpm [6] cviiii [7] sicA route from Isca Silurum to Calleva Atrebatum thus109161100
Burrio mpm viii Usk, Monmouthshire8127.5
Blestio mpm xi Monmouth, Monmouthshire111610
Ariconio mpm xiBury Hill, Weston under Penyard, Herefordshire111610
Clevo mpm xv Gloucester, Gloucestershire152214
(no entry - mpm xx)perhaps Corinium Dobunnorum at modern Cirencester, Gloucestershire(20)(30)(18.5)
Durocornovio mpm xiiiiperhaps Wanborough, Wiltshire 142113
Spinis mpm xv Speen, Berkshire 152214
Calleva mpm xv Silchester, Hampshire152214

Below are the original Latin names for sites along route 14, [8] followed by a translation with a possible (but not necessarily authoritative) name for the modern sites. [5]

Iter XIV (Itinerary 14)
Latin ablativeTranslated possible site nameDistance
Roman (mile)Metric (km)English (mile)
Item alio itinere ab Isca Calleva mpm ciii sicAn alternate route from Isca Silurum to Calleva Atrebatum thus10315295
Venta Silurum mpm viiii Caerwent, Monmouthshire9138
Abone mpm xiiii Sea Mills, Gloucestershire142113
Traiectus mpm viiiiperhaps Bitton, near Willsbridge, Gloucestershire9138
Aquis Solis mpm vi Bath, Somerset 695.5
Verlucione mpm xv Sandy Lane, Wiltshire 152214
Cunetione mpm xx Mildenhall, Wiltshire 203018.5
Spinis mpm xv Speen, Berkshire 152214
Calleva mpm xv Silchester, Hampshire152214

A confounding factor

De Situ Britanniae (made available c.1749, published 1757) was a forgery by Charles Bertram that provided much spurious information on Roman Britain, including "itineraries" that overlapped the legitimate Antonine Itineraries, sometimes with contradicting information. Its authenticity was not seriously challenged until 1845, and it was still cited as an authoritative source until the late nineteenth century. By then, its false data had infected almost every account of ancient British history, and had been adopted into the Ordnance Survey maps, [9] as General Roy and his successors believed it to be a legitimate source of information, on a par with the Antonine Itineraries. While the document is no longer cited since its authenticity became indefensible, its data has not been systematically removed from past and present works.

Some authors, such as Thomas Reynolds, without challenging the authenticity of the forgery, took care to note its discrepancies and challenge the quality of its information. [10] [11] This was not always so, even after the forgery was debunked.

Gonzalo Arias (died 2008) proposed that some of the distance anomalies in the British section of the Antonine Itinerary resulted from the loss of Latin grammatical endings, as these had marked junctions heading towards places, as distinct from the places themselves. [12] However, Arias may not have taken account of earlier work indicating that distances were measured between the edges of administrative areas of named settlements as opposed to centre-to-centre, thereby explaining supposed distance shortfalls and providing additional useful data on the approximate sizes of such areas. [13]

Hispania

Main Roman roads in Hispania Hispania roads.svg
Main Roman roads in Hispania
Roads listed on the Itinerary MAPA ANTONINO.png
Roads listed on the Itinerary

There are 34 routes in the itinerary for the provinces of Hispania.

RouteStartEndDistance (Roman miles)
1Mediolanum (Milan) Legio VII Gemina (León)1257
2Arelate (Arles) Castulo 898
3Corduba (Córdoba)Castulo99
4CordubaCastulo78
5CastuloMalaca (Málaga)291
6MalacaGades (Cádiz)145
7GadesCorduba294
8Hispalis (Seville)Corduba94
9Hispalis Italica 6
10Hispalis Emerita (Mérida)162
11CordubaEmerita144
12 Olisipo (Lisbon)Emerita161
13Salacia (Alcácer)Ossonoba (Faro)16
14OlisipoEmerita145
15OlisipoEmerita220
16Olisipo Bracara (Braga)244
17BracaraAsturica (Astorga)247
18 BracaraAsturica215
19BracaraAsturica299
20BracaraAsturica207
21Esuris (Castro Marim) Pax Julia 267
22EsurisPax Julia76
23Mouth of the Ana (Guadiana)Emerita313
24Emerita Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza)632
25Emerita Caesaraugusta 348
26Asturica Caesaraugusta 497
27Asturica Caesaraugusta 301
28Turiaso (Tarazona) Caesaraugusta 56
29Emerita Caesaraugusta 458
30 Laminium (Fuenllana)Toletum (Toledo)95
31 Laminium Toletum249
32Asturica Tarraco (Tarragona)482
33CaesaraugustaBenearnum (Lescar)112
34 AsturicaBurdigala (Bordeaux)421

See also

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References

Citations

  1. 1 2 Wikisource-logo.svg One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Antonini Itinerarium". Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 148.
  2. Rivet, A. L. F.; Jackson, Kenneth (1970). "The British Section of the Antonine Itinerary". Britannia. 1: 34–82. doi:10.2307/525833. JSTOR   525833. S2CID   162217811.
  3. 1 2 Öberg (2023), p. 5.
  4. Parthey & Pinder 1848 :232–33 in Britannia
  5. 1 2 Codrington 1918, In Roman Roads in Britain
  6. = milia plus minus
  7. Roman numerals
  8. Parthey & Pinder 1848 :233 in Britannia
  9. Redmonds, George (2004), Names and History: People, Places and Things, Hambledon & London, pp.  65–68, ISBN   978-1-85285-426-3 A Major Place-Name Ignored
  10. Reynolds 1799 Iter Britanniarum
  11. Dyer 1816 Vulgar Errors, Ancient and Modern
  12. For most Roman roads in Hispania, see Gonzalo Arias. "El Miliario Extravagante". Archived from the original on 2011-07-25. Retrieved 2012-08-27.. Cf. also his Grammar in the Antonine Itinerary: A Challenge to British Archaeologists (available in only a few libraries).
  13. Cf. Rodwell, "Milestones, Civic Territories and the Antonine Itinerary", 6 Britannia 76-101 (1975).

Bibliography