The Antonine Itinerary (, "Itinerary of the Emperor Antoninus") is an , 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. Owing to the scarcity of other extant records of this type, it is a valuable historical record.
Transmission
Manuscripts
Almost nothing is known of its author or the conditions of the Itinerary's compilation. Numerous manuscripts survive, the eight oldest dating to some point between the 7th to 10th centuries AD, after the onset of the Carolingian Renaissance. 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. The most likely imperial patron—if the work had one—would have been Caracalla.
It appears to have been relatively well known between the 8th and 10th centuries, but to have fallen into a state of relative neglect from the 11th to 14th centuries, before being rediscovered in the 15th century by humanist scholars including Pietro Donato, Flavio Biondo and Ermolao Barbaro.
+Manuscripts of the Antonine ItinerarySiglumLibraryShelfmarkDate (Century)FoliosNotesSourcePEscorialensisRBME R II 18 7th-9th67r-82vFinishes half way through Gaul on f.82v.DBnFLatin 7230A 10th87r-97vLVindobonensisCod. 181 8th26r-60vEarliest to contain the Iter Britanniarum. The manuscript was corrected/updated by at least three hands, occurring at different places in the stemma codicum.BBnFLatin 4807 9th18-64British section 58-60.βVindobonensisCod. 12825 15th25v-76vRFlorentinus LaurentianusPlut.89 sup.67 10thCBnFLatin 4808 12th
Stemma
There are many manuscripts preserving the textual tradition of the Antonine Itinerary. For their edition of 1848 Parthey and Pinder used 21 and listed a further 17 derivatives, however Cuntz (1929) focused his work on the critical edition to just 7 manuscripts: P, D, L, B, β, R and C. He considered manuscripts P and D to be the most reliable and upon which was based the text of the critical edition. Manuscript L was revised on at least 3 occasions by 3 different hands with each placing differently in the stemma; this was used as the basis for the critical text for sections missing from P and D. Despite being 600 years apart, B and β are considered sister manuscripts. R and C are sisters from the most recent recension used by Cuntz.
Of Cuntz' critical edition, only manuscripts L, B, β, R and C preserve the Iter Britanniarum.
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 (0.296 m), resulting in a Roman mile of .
Examples Below are the original Latin ablative forms for sites along route 13, in Britannia followed by a translation with a possible (but not necessarily authoritative) name for the modern sites., In Roman Roads in Britain 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 ablative Translated possible site name Distance Romanmiles Metric(km) Englishmiles Item ab Isca Calleva mpm= milia plus minus cviiiiRoman numerals sic A route from Isca Silurum to Calleva Atrebatum thus 109 161 100 Burrio mpm viii Usk, Monmouthshire 8 12 7.5 Blestio mpm xi Monmouth, Monmouthshire 11 16 10 Ariconio mpm xi Bury Hill, Weston under Penyard, Herefordshire 11 16 10 Clevo mpm xv Gloucester, Gloucestershire 15 22 14 (no entry - mpm xx) perhaps Corinium Dobunnorum at modern Cirencester, Gloucestershire(20)(30)(18.5) Durocornovio mpm xiiii perhaps Wanborough, Wiltshire 14 21 13 Spinis mpm xv Speen, Berkshire 15 22 14 Calleva mpm xv Silchester, Hampshire 15 22 14
Below are the original Latin names for sites along route 14, in Britannia followed by a translation with a possible (but not necessarily authoritative) name for the modern sites. + Iter XIV (Itinerary 14) Latin ablative Translated possible site name Distance Romanmiles Metric(km) Englishmiles Item alio itinere ab Isca Calleva mpm ciii sic An alternate route from Isca Silurum to Calleva Atrebatum thus 103 152 95 Venta Silurum mpm viiii Caerwent, Monmouthshire 9 13 8 Abone mpm xiiii Sea Mills, Gloucestershire 14 21 13 Traiectus mpm viiii perhaps Bitton, near Willsbridge, Gloucestershire 9 13 8 Aquis Solis mpm vi Bath, Somerset 6 9 5.5 Verlucione mpm xv Sandy Lane, Wiltshire 15 22 14 Cunetione mpm xx Mildenhall, Wiltshire 20 30 18.5 Spinis mpm xv Speen, Berkshire 15 22 14 Calleva mpm xv Silchester, Hampshire 15 22 14
A confounding factor De Situ Britanniae (made available , 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, A Major Place-Name Ignored 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. Iter Britanniarum Vulgar Errors, Ancient and Modern 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.For most Roman roads in Hispania, see . Cf. also his Grammar in the Antonine Itinerary: A Challenge to British Archaeologists (available in only a few libraries). 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.Cf. Rodwell, "Milestones, Civic Territories and the Antonine Itinerary", 6 Britannia 76–101 (1975).
Hispania
There are 34 routes in the itinerary for the provinces of Hispania. Route Start End Distance (Roman miles) 1 Mediolanum (Milan) Legio VII Gemina (León) 1257 2 Arelate (Arles) Castulo 898 3 Corduba (Córdoba) Castulo 99 4 Corduba Castulo 78 5 Castulo Malaca (Málaga) 291 6 Malaca Gades (Cádiz) 145 7 Gades Corduba 294 8 Hispalis (Seville) Corduba 94 9 Hispalis Italica 6 10 Hispalis Emerita (Mérida) 162 11 Corduba Emerita 144 12 Olisipo (Lisbon) Emerita 161 13 Salacia (Alcácer) Ossonoba (Faro) 16 14 Olisipo Emerita 145 15 Olisipo Emerita 220 16 Olisipo Bracara (Braga) 244 17 Bracara Asturica (Astorga) 247 18 Bracara Asturica 215 19 Bracara Asturica 299 20 Bracara Asturica 207 21 Esuris (Castro Marim) Pax Julia 267 22 Esuris Pax Julia 76 23 Mouth of the Ana (Guadiana) Emerita 313 24 Emerita Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza) 632 25 Emerita Caesaraugusta 348 26 Asturica Caesaraugusta 497 27 Asturica Caesaraugusta 301 28 Turiaso (Tarazona) Caesaraugusta 56 29 Emerita Caesaraugusta 458 30 Laminium (Fuenllana) Toletum (Toledo) 95 31 Laminium Toletum 249 32 Asturica Tarraco (Tarragona) 482 33 Caesaraugusta Benearnum (Lescar) 112 34 Asturica Burdigala (Bordeaux) 421
See also Roman units Laminium Via XXXI Caesaraugusta Peutinger Table Ptolemy's Geography Ravenna Cosmography
References Citations
Bibliography
The standard modern edition of the Itinerary is in O. Cuntz, Itineraria Romana, vol. 1: Itineraria Antonini Augusti et Burdigalense (Leipzig 1929), nos, 175 (terrestrial), 7685 (maritime). The first edition was by Geoffroy Troy: Bernd Löhberg, Das 'Itinerarium provinciarum Antonini Augusti' (2006)
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External links
The Antonine Itinerary: Iter Britanniarum - The British Section Analysis of the Itinerary Itinerarium Antonini Augusti (the Balkanic roads) at SOLTDM.COM Roman Roads in Britain Complete map of the Antonine Itinerary Omnes Viae - data from the Peutinger Table and Antonine Itinerary with digitial path finding. Vici.org - CC ancient map wiki that shows Roman roads from the Antonine Itinerary and Peutinger table. Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire (DARE) - University of Gothenburg GIS project that shows Roman roads and other data.