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Roman Milestones in Cyrenaica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

R. G. Goodchild
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Extract

The ancient coast road of Libya which runs close to the shore from Berenice (Benghasi) to Teuchira (Tocra) and Ptolemais (Tolmeita) later swings inland to reach Cyrene, and climbs to the second plateau of the Gebel Akhdar (some 500 metres above sea-level), which it reaches in the vicinity of Messa. From Messa eastwards the road can be traced without difficulty, in the form of a shallow cutting in the rock (probably of Greek origin), to Zavia Beda where the remains of the Roman town of Balagrae are still visible. On the Peutinger Map Balagrae is marked as 12 Roman miles from Cyrene, and this figure is accurate if one follows the course of the old road from Beda to the south gate of Cyrene. For its last three kilometres before reaching Cyrene, the ancient road is very clearly visible as a sunk track cut in the rock, with numerous wheel-ruts, and with ancient tombs flanking it. It is far from straight and makes several sharp bends, but there is no indication that Roman engineers attempted to eliminate these eccentricities when the road became one of the highways of the Empire.

Roman milestones previously found in the area of Cyrene have all come from the Cyrene—Apollonia road, and the Trajanic column which marked the first mile on that route was found in 1915 by Italian military engineers in the course of bringing back into use the long-abandoned Roman road, which descends the upper escarpment of the Gebel. The column is now in the Museum at Cyrene, but its exact original site can be identified from photographs taken at the time of its discovery: it stood a little east of the large circular tomb immediately below the gallery which now houses the greater part of the ancient sculpture from the Italian excavations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 18 , November 1950 , pp. 83 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1950

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References

1 A small area of Balagrae was excavated by the Italian antiquities service in 1920; but no account of this excavation has ever been published. For earlier discoveries on this site see Rendic. R. Acc. dei Lincei XXVII (1918) 356 ffGoogle Scholar.

2 The modern road Cyrene–Apollonia is coincident with the ancient road for a large part of its course, except at the descent of the lower escarpment near Apollonia.

3 Notiziario Archeologico I (1915) 175–6Google Scholar, and figs. 52 and 55.

4 The selection of points from which mileages were measured seems to have varied according to region and period. In Rome the mileages were measured from the gates of the Servian Wall and not from the Miliarium Aureum in the centre of the city. In other cases the centre of the town was the selected point. (Daremberg-Saglio, , Dictionnaire des Antiquités, III, 1898Google Scholar).

5 All the early milestones (first two centuries A.D.) in Cyrenaica have cubical bases attached to the shaft. The third-century milestones in Tripolitania invariably have separate bases with a recessed socket, into which the column fitted. The latter system must have been more convenient for the transportation of large numbers of milestones along desert tracks. Cf. Goodchild, R. G., Roman Roads and Milestones in Tripolitania (Tripoli, 1948), 7Google Scholar.

6 The column has been re-erected on the small masonry platform on which it originally stood. The work of restoration was carried out in 1947 by Sig. Salvatore Minniti, to whose technical skill Cyrene already owes so much.

7 Mr. Hugh Last has kindly drawn my attention to Dessau, ILS 9375 as a Tiberian example of dating by the proconsular year. A second-century example of the use of the word anno followed by the proconsul's name is provided by an inscription from Kairouan in Tunisia (Cagnat-Merlin, Inscr. lat. d'Aftique, no. 80).

8 These tracks are accurately shown on the map of the Cyrene area by F. W. and H. W. Beechey Expedition to Africa (1828), opp. p. 405.

9 Itineraria Romana (ed. Cuntz) I (1929) 10. This road passed by the road-station Limniade, which has been identified with the modern Lamluda. A possible fourth road leaving Cyrene is that also described in the Itinerary as joining Cyrene and Ptolemais via Semeros and Lasamices (see footnote 16).

10 Although it would be possible to read tirones missos in provinciam in the Latin text of the Trajanic milestone, the proposed reading lectos ex provincia is more easily reconciled with the surviving fragments of the Greek text.

11 E. Birley, Durham University Journal, June 1948, 79–80, where it is argued that the British war in question is most likely to have occurred between 100 and 120. The earlier margin of 89 allows one to conjecture that Karus may have been posted to Cyrene in 100 immediately after the conclusion of campaigns which took place in Britain during the 90s.

12 Goodchild, op. cit. 30.

13 P. Romanelli, La Cirenaica Romana (1943) 138.

14 Dessau PIR1, II, M. 442–3; Pauly-Wissowa, RE, ‘Minicius’, no. 22–23; R-M. Smith and E. A. Porcher, Recent Discoveries at Cyrene (1864), 114 (inscr. no. 15).

15 Oliverio, , Africa Italiana I (1927) 318–320Google Scholar. The two bases to which the inscriptions of Claudius and Hadrian (nos. 8a and Sb) belonged are still in situ, and show that the milestone columns originally stood at least 1·75 m., and probably over 2 m., high.

16 If we accept K. Miller's interpretation (Itineraria Romana, (1916), 975, fig. 277) of the route between Ptolemais and Cyrene given in the Antonine Itinerary, the Slonta–El-Faidia stretch of ancient road may belong to this route. This ‘south road’ could never have been the main line of communication between the two cities, but the Antonine Itinerary text is clearly corrupt, and the road Ptolemais–Semeros–Lesamices–Cyrene may be intended only as an alternative route passing through the limes area of Cyrenaica. The omission of the main road Ptolemais–Caenopolis–Balagrae–Cyrene in the Itinerary, and the duplication of the entry regarding the south road, may both result from a textual error, (cf. Itineraria Romana (ed. Cuntz, O.) I (1929) 9–10Google Scholar).

17 Goodchild, op. cit., 14–23. The fact that there were in Tripolitania two interior roads, both marked by milestones but neither indicated in the itineraries, shows that in Cyrenaica, as elsewhere in the Roman Empire, we cannot draw negative conclusions from the absence of roads in the documentary sources. Exploration in the field is required.