Antiquité Tardive - Late Antiquity - Spätantike - Tarda Antichità

Between the 4^th and 5^th centuries BC, the use, management and hierarchies of Roman roads changed. In particular, at that period the itineraria (Antonini, Burdigalense and Tabula Peutingeriana) and the milestones, together with the literary texts, attest on one hand the vitality of roads due to military and pilgrimage purposes, on the other hand the problems regarding their maintenance.

The milestones from the Tetrarchic period became acts of tribute to the emperors by the local jurisdictions (cf. text in dative and the decrease of mileage indication), demonstrating a different management of the roads. In fact, the dedications to the central power may indicate a new role of the provinces/towns in the maintenance and care of the roads passing through their territory, together with the voluntary declaration of loyalty and devotion to the emperors.

In the context of the late antique political transformations, deep changes are observed in the hierarchy between the roads, strictly related to the changes of urban and rural settlement: between the 4^th and 5^th centuries a few roads lost their importance, in favour to others (such as waterways) which before had had only a secondary use. The paper explains the phenomenon, and in Roman Cisalpina in particular. [Author]

The literary, epigraphic and archaeological testimonies relating to the circulation across the vast Roman frontier of Africa Proconsularis, dating back to the period between the 3^rd century and the time of Augustine of Hippo, are regularly taken to support the hypothesis of specific devices intended to control the entry points into the Empire. The analysis of this evidence becomes all the more crucial as no written testimony provides proof of a general Roman doctrine regarding formalities related to the crossing of the limits of Roman territory. The interpretation of the African documentation remains debatable, however. The new examination undertaken through this study aims at establishing the reality and the extent of an official control at the boundaries of the province during Late Antiquity. [Author]

The cursus publicus was streamlined during Diocletian's reign (see Lemcke 2016); it was born from the transformation of the vehiculatio that was created by Augustus. The ancient system in the 4^th century did not provide the new requirements of transportation and the increased needs of communication between the Emperor and the provincials. The author examines the new system, the usage rights, the users, and the infrastructures in the perspective of their effective and integral tool for the Roman administration. It is clear the system was not a postal service, as it has been often presented. The development of the cursus publicus is studied from the late Tetrarchy to the 6^th century, through three principal steps.

The supplement to paper aims to study the milestone of Pistunina-Messina (inv. ME 22391), the only extant copy of imperial period in Sicily. It is a very important archaeological evidence of the dynastic politic propaganda of Constantine. The inscription partly mutilated is a dedication to the Emperor and likely to two Caesares, Crispus and Constantine the Second, between 321 and 324 AD. The milestone was connected also with the road networks, the stations of cursus publicus, the econ omic system and the Sicilian provincial administration. [Author]

Late antique itineraries and juridical sources show that both the Roman road system and the related post stations network were still active in Late Antiquity. Roads and stations were primarily used by public officers travelling under the aegis of the cursus publicus, but literary sources confirm that they were also used by private people, travelling for different purposes.

Many different words (mansio, stathmos, statio, mutatio, deversorium, praetorium, etc.) indicate the places used by travellers for resting and, if the case, for changing horses, pack- and draught-animals. Unfortunately, this relative abundance of written sources is not paralleled by a similar amount of archaeological data, since the archaeological research agenda had only just recently focused on "minor" settlements located along the roads. While many smaller or larger archaeological sites located along the roads have been tentatively recognised as places associated with post station functions, mainly on the basis of their toponymy, we still lack a proper research framework to archaeologically identify such a function. A more or less close relationship with a road pathway, the presence of a large paved courtyard surrounded by stables and warehouses, the existence of a baths building or a larger, isolated, thermal complex seem to be assumed as possible archaeological indicators of a site that performed the function of resting place, may be in association with other functions as well.

Despite of the difficulty in precisely identifying the place and the typology of any single part of the system, the road stations network provides on the whole a very interesting study case for an experiment of contextual archaeology, intended to evaluate the role that those settlements had within the scenery presented by the overall transformation of landscapes and the settlement patterns in Late Antiquity. [Author]

Since the second half of the 4^th century, the transportation system of the whole empire started to undergo transformations and adaptations. In the first phase, these changes can mainly be seen in the infrastructures of road stations and other stopping places. In most cases these consisted in creating Christian places of worship in the immediate vicinity of the complex which offered services to road traffic. Already during the same 4^th century, however, a growing interest in the system of communication networks was noticeable on the part of the Church. This interest was initially implemented only in a set of recommendations for Christian travellers, with regard to increasing the number of Christian hosts to house the faithful during their pilgrimage journey. At the same time, the Church, through its representatives from the clergy, the monks, and many of the élites of the Christian community, and even of the Imperial family, started creating buildings for use in assisting the pilgrims and other kinds of travellers. In a rather short period of time, already before the mid-5^th century, the Church was thought of as the institution in charge of managing the road transport system. [Author]

What happened to the Mediterranean harbour installations after the Imperial period? How can we interpret that qualitative and, at least in part, quantitative, collapse which appears from a superficial analysis of the archaeological remains? Does the problem of the lack of visibility of the evidence for late antique harbour contexts – caused by both natural and anthropic phenomenona effecting their disappearance whether due to their lesser monumentaly, hence less striking construction techniques – exist? Is it possible, in the end, that the knowledge of harbour engineering, developed after the Augustan period, due especially to the use of concrete with pozzolana, was lost or no longer used? Having provided an overview of the results of recent investigations that have focused on a number of Mediterranean harbours built in the Late Antique period and the Late Antique phases of harbour contexts founded in the imperial period, this article wishes to go beyond the traditional approach, founded on the concept of the "decline" of the functionality and of the monumentality of the harbours, based often only on traditional sources. Taking into consideration obviously the deep technological and topographical differences of harbours in the two halves of the Mediterranean, and using, for comparison the insediative logic of harbours of the North European coastal landscape, we analyse the processes that occurred in the Mare Nostrum in a phenomenon marked by the physical remodeling of the harbours for reduced necessities, both of functional type and especially of ideological type. We intend thus to consider this shift as a sort of return to "normality" and the late antique period, here under special scrutiny, appears once again as a crucial moment where such landscapes are evident. In this period, indeed, we record opposite signs of behaviour, which range from the extreme of new harbour models closer to those of the ancient world to the return to a widespread, and almost total, use of the wood. However this recovery of the "normality" uses at least part of the now unnecessarily imperial installations and, in case of the foundation of new harbours, uses techniques and materials that are less monumental but no less functional than those of earlier times, at least with regard to their reduced needs. [Author]

Studies of transport methods during Late Antiquity make it possible nowadays to overcome the generally accepted views on harness, stirrup or saddle. For forty years now, scholars have been able to demonstrate how capable the Romans were in the West in making use of equids for transport. Indeed, by analysing and cross-checking literary, iconographical and archaeological data, it seems that this period is marked by numerous advances, and even if this was relatively slow, there was continuous progress. Thus, the Middle Ages should no longer be considered the period of "major innovations", raising horse-riding to new heights with respect to Antiquity. This article aims to describe specific horse equipment for the saddle, stirrups and for the harness during Late Antiquity in the West, showing their efficiency as well as their flaws and also presents some rare iconographic documents of the period concerning this theme. [Transl. by the Redaction]

Assaults and murders of travellers by bandits are frequently mentioned in the sources of the 4^th and beginning of the 5^th century, especially in patristics. However, this risk seems to have been overemphasized by bishops and hagiographical writers for rhetorical and moral reasons, even if it caused real anxiety to travellers. Only temporary closures of communication on major roads were perceived by contemporary authors as a real concern. The perception of some cases of regional banditry, often linked to military disorder or local subsistence crises, will be discussed for Thracia in 378, the vicinity of Rome in 382-383, and of Antioch in 385-387, and the regions surrounding Isauria in 403-407. The State punctually enforced measures supposed to limit these assaults. It restricted, for example, the use of horses and weapons in Campania in 365, and enabled in 391 travellers to kill their aggressors without restriction, widening the right of self-defence. [Author]

The foundation of Constantinople as a new or second capital of the Roman Empire brought about a change in the orientation of the movements of the imperial court. These movements are mainly known to us through the legal documentation, since emperors on the move enacted a large number of laws of which a small part has been preserved in the two legal compilations of late Antiquity, the Theodosian Code and the Justinian Code. Even though these preserved laws do not necessarily represent the emperors’ day to day activity, they constitute nevertheless the primary source of information for reconstructing the geography and chronology of their travels, for which Constantinople was the hub, since the city stood exactly between the Danubian and Euphrates frontiers. By the end of the 4^th century, official trips were limited to the regions close to the capital and, after 450, to the vicinity of Constantinople. This progressive sedentarisation of imperial power represented a concentration of authority and did not in any way manifest its impotence. [Author]

One of the reasons that led to a long journey during Late Antiquity was the attraction of the Holy Land, towards which the religious aspirations of the faithful converged from all over the Empire from the time of the Peace of the Church. So many journeys emphasized the pilgrims’ concern to be closer to God by approaching places made sacred by the memory of a biblical story or by the presence of a martyr’s tomb. This practice, coupled with the expansion of the cult of relics, was a major element that contributed to the creation of sacred spaces in the Christian Near East. This article proposes to address this phenomenon in the light of archaeology. It aims to offer a comprehensive reading of pilgrimage-related remains to consider what they tell us about this particular category of travellers. [Author]

Sidonius travelled extensively. We can arrange his movements into four types: the official journey or one related to public life (trips to Rome, Arles and Toulouse); the pastoral journey (once he became bishop); the social trip (to visit friends); the forced journey (his journey into exile in 475). The letters of Sidonius (his poems are of little use for the subject at hand here) are artistic letters, which often exclude prosaic and concrete details and veil the reality under literary reference. They often frustrate us by omitting material aspects that we would expect. However there is a lot more information than is generally thought, as we try to demonstrate in an analysis of the letter I, 5, where Sidonius describes his trip from Lyon to Rome in 467. [Author]

The Vita Germani, the hagiography of Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, was written by Constantius of Lyon around 475-480 and commissioned by Patiens, bishop of Lyon. It deals with the many ecclesiastical missions and extensive travels which Germanus accomplished both within and beyond the borders of Gaul. In Constantius’ account, Germanus’ travels are the narrative structure within which his many miracles are described, in order to sketch a model of episcopal holiness befitting the purposes of his church. In this paper I will examine Germanus’ travels within Gaul, specifically the journey from Auxerre to Arles, and that to the Alpine pass which he crossed in his last journey to Ravenna. [Author]

The theme of the journey and the figure of the poet-traveller hold an important place in the poetic work of the Christian and Italian poet Venantius Fortunatus who came to Gaul in the 560s, in the Merovingian period, where he was to spend the rest of his life. In the Carmina and in Vita Martini, apart from the importance of the rhetoric, spiritual and meta-poetic topos of the poet-traveller, generic variations on the theme of the journey must be added, since this can take the form of a letter, elegy or even an epic. The theme of the journey in Fortunatus culminates in the book relating the journey which completes the Vita Martini: the book indeed concludes by the return to Italy which Fortunatus never lived to see again. Hence, the theme of the journey in Fortunatus is as much involved in a self-building as in the execution of a poetic work in which the figure of the poet-traveller may be one of the keys. [Transl. by the Redaction]

Colomban quitta le monastère de Bangor, en Irlande du Nord, aux environs de 590 et mourut à Bobbio en 615. Entre ces deux dates, il voyagea beaucoup dans le royaume des Francs. Ses plus importants déplacements sont rapportés en détail dans la Vita Columbani écrite par Jean de Bobbio, qui donne de précieuses informations sur les modes de transport, notamment à travers le voyage que Colomban entreprit de Luxeuil à Nantes et de Nantes en Austrasie jusqu’à Bregenz aux environs de 610. Jean livre également d’importants témoignages de son propre voyage de Bobbio à Suse et de Bobbio à Rome. Son récit nous éclaire sur les routes et les rivières en lien avec les voyages durant la fin du VI^e et le début du VII^e siècle. Ces informations peuvent notamment être confrontées aux témoignages archéologiques concernant la navigation sur la Loire et le Rhin à l’époque romaine tardive. [Trad. de la Rédaction]

After some remarks on the relation that links travel and literature together, and a short investigation of the vocabulary of travel, which reveals some interesting symbolic meanings, the paper considers how the journey is represented in some literary texts dating back to Late Antiquity. The symbolic meaning of the travel can be examined with reference to the ideas of time and space (because of its direction and the timing of its stages), centre and periphery, identity and difference, flight and return, sedentariness and nomadism, truth and fiction, reality and imagination, and so on. In the case of Christianity, it widely enriched the symbolism of travel and journeys: they became a metaphor for the entire life and represented the human road to heaven, namely through pilgrimage and preaching. Journeys preserved their symbolic meanings for pagans, too, especially with respect to the emperors’ journeys and celebration of triumphs. Travelling was also typical of many barbarian tribes: their nomadism was felt to be just the opposite of the Romans’ sedentarism. Finally, travelling has an important symbolic function in the descriptions of imaginary places and especially of the heavens, both in Christian and pagan literature: the journey, which usually aims at a joining together, can also emphasize the differences and the distance and keep ideal places and reality apart. [Author]