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The Western Part of the Via Egnatia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

N. G. L. Hammond
N. G. L. Hammond
Affiliation:
The University of Bristol
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Extract

This article arises from a visit to Albania in September 1972, when I travelled up and down the valley of the Shkumbi river, and from recent discoveries by Albanian archaeologists which have been reported in Albanian periodicals, Monumentet 1971, i, 43–59, and ii, 25–35, and Studia Albanica 1972, i, 85–106. The new evidence has confirmed some views and overthrown others which I put forward in A History of Macedonia i (1972), 19 f., based as they inevitably were on the reports of Pouqueville and other travellers down to Praschniker and Schober. I have now seen part of the scene for myself and have had the advantage of conversations with the discoverers themselves, Hasan Ceka, his son Neritan Ceka and Llazar Papajani, to whom I am most grateful. The new evidence is in Section A 1–3 of the article, and some conclusions are given in Section B.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 64 , November 1974 , pp. 185 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © N. G. L. Hammond 1974. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 The edition of Cuntz, O., Itineraria Romana i (Leipzig, 1929)Google Scholar is used in this article.

2 Voyage dans la Grèce (Paris, 1820) iii, 63 fGoogle Scholar.

3 Mission archéologique de Macédoine (Paris, 1876) 346Google Scholar.

4 ‘Voyage épigraphique à Elbasan’, Listy Filologické lxxxv (1962), 62 with fig. 7Google Scholar.

5 ibid. with figs. 4 and 5.

6 As published in O. Cuntz, op. cit.

7 Nowack, E., Geolog. Karte von Albanien 1:200,000 (Berlin, 1928)Google Scholar, based on material collected in 1922–24.

8 ‘Rruga në luginën e Shkumbinit në kohën antike,’ Monumentet 1971, 1, 43–59Google Scholar, with a summary in French; and ‘La route de la vallée du Shkumbin dans l'antiquité,’ Studia Albanica 1972, i, 85–106Google Scholar. The latter periodical is referred to as SA hereafter.

9 Monumentet, loc. cit. fig. 4, and SA, loc. cit. fig. 4; Pouqueville, loc. cit.

10 Monumentet fig. 5, and SA fig 5.

11 SA fig. 6.

12 Monumentet fig. 6, 7 and 8; SA figs. 7, 8 and 9. I am less confident about the attribution of forms of construction and types of zigzag than the authors, but the broad distinction between packhorse tracks and carriageable gradients can be made firmly; see my comments on the main road in antiquity through the Megarid in BSA xlix (1954) 113 ffGoogle Scholar.

13 The distances given in Tab. Peut. and It. Burd. 608 enabled me to place Ad Dianam southeast of Babië near a high point ‘757’ on the Italian map 1:50,000, reproduced by the British GS in 1944; mansio Grandavia at Spathar; In Candavia near Qukës (cf. Macedonia i, 28, map 4).

14 So too L. Vidman, loc. cit., describing the route as ‘tout à fait impraticable’, even on foot. He noticed the traces of an early road on the left bank coming up to the bridge.

15 SA 1972, i, 102, fig. 10Google Scholar.

16 Monumentet 1971, i, 61 f.; the Elbasan bricks measure 36 × 24 × 4·5 cm. Praschniker, C. and Schober, A., Archäologische Forschungen in Albanien und Montenegro (Vienna, 1919) 48 fGoogle Scholar. put the first fortification of the site at any time between 300 and 530.

17 Monumentet 1971, i, 52, fig. 9Google Scholar, and SA 1972, iGoogle Scholar, fig. 11.

18 Differences of one or two miles may be due to inclusive or exclusive reckoning, as I have argued in Macedonia i, 21.

19 The Roman mile is calculated here at 1,482 m, and I have taken my measurements on Nowack's map 1:200,000. I have also made checks on the Italian map 1:50,000. One cannot assume that the kilometres of a modern road correspond to the distance on a Roman road, because the latter was much more direct. It is interesting that the distance on the road from Durrës to Elbasan was 78 km on the Italian map of the 1930s, and 82 km on the modern international road map of the Istituto Geografico di Agostini.

20 With variant readings of XXIII and XLIII.

21 Praschniker, C., ‘Muzakhia und Malakastra’, JOAI xxi–ii (1922–1924)Google Scholar Beiblatt, 126 came to the same conclusion: ‘ausserdem ist die Zahl XXVI auf dem nach Clodiana führenden Strich in XVI zu āndern.’

22 For the site of Aulon, see Hammond, N. G. L., Epirus (Oxford, 1967) 132 f. and 689Google Scholar.

23 C. Praschniker, loc. cit. 60. A piece of paved road 6 m wide has been reported just outside the walls of Apollonia (Bul. Univ. Shtet. Tiranës 1960, i, 95)Google Scholar.

24 The modern track keeps to the western side of the range of hills and that is why I have put the ancient road there; but the eastern side is also possible and there are two places on this side called Gradishte, which implies some ancient remains.

25 C. Praschniker, loc. cit. 15, gives an interesting account of changes in the course of the Semeni between 1804 and 1922.

26 See C. Praschniker, loc. cit. 55; there has been a change again between 1868 and 1922.

27 See May, J. M. F. in JRS xxxvi (1946) 54 f.Google Scholar; it was navigable according to Strabo, C 316, and Anna Comnena, Alex. 12, 9.

28 See Macedonia i, 142. fGoogle Scholar.

29 Comnena, Anna, Alex. i, 7Google Scholar, 3, gave this explanation.

30 Also in April 1932 when I travelled on this route. The Austrian army in the First World War built a bridge 900 m long over the Shkumbi at Thanaj, but the river soon destroyed it.

31 C. Praschniker, loc. cit. 118 f., with figs 45 and 46.

32 JOAI xxi–ii (1922–1924)Google Scholar, Beiblatt 218 f., with fig. 128; SA 1972, i, 89Google Scholar. I visited the lake in 1932.

33 C. Praschniker and A. Schober, op. cit. (n. 16 above) 59 f., with figs. 69, 70 and 71.

34 N. G. L. Hammond, Epirus 235. Praschniker and Schober, op. cit. 60, noted that the superstructure on the piers may have been made of wood, because there is no sign of any arch: ‘es sind an keinem der Pfeiler Ansätze von einer Gewölbekonstruction’. There were some later repairs, and these may be the reason why Ceka, N. and Papajani, L. in SA 1972, i, 98Google Scholar think the bridge was of the Roman period.

35 Praschniker and Schober, op. cit. 75 f., and Derveni, L., ‘Gjurmë te reja në kalanë e Margëlliçit,’ Monumentet 1971, ii, 147 fGoogle Scholar.

36 JRS lviii (1968) 12 fGoogle Scholar.

37 It was evidently the counterpart of Elbasan which is now the chief city of the Shkumbi valley; see Epirus 737.

38 Praschniker, loc. cit. 123, did not notice the anomaly and took the road the long way round by Lushnjë and Thanaj.

39 ibid. 122.

40 See Macedonia i, 56, n. 2Google Scholar.

41 For a stadion-stone and road-markers in Macedonian sections of the route see Edson, C. F., ‘The Location of Cellae and the route of the Via Egnatia in Western Macedonia’, CP xlvi (1951) 11 fGoogle Scholar. The stone was published in AM xviii (1893), 419Google Scholar.

42 Denkschriften (1867) 2, 50, n. 3.

43 Described in Epirus 132 f.

44 There is an interesting parallel in the coastal plain of Macedonia, where a Roman road was built across the plain for the first time at the end of the third century A.D. or thereabouts; see Edson, C. F., CP 1 (1955) 180Google Scholar, and Macedonia i, 160 fGoogle Scholar.

45 See Epirus 690 f. and map 18. A Roman milestone found recently near Murzinë has shown the existence of a branch-road from Onchesmus to Hadrianopolis.