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4th century Roman travel

Roman horseman (Author photo of Marcus Aurelius in the Capitoline)

Travelling in the ancient world was different, fundamentally different. Young (and not so young) men were by far the most mobile in the Ancient Rome over the whole period whether you count it to AD 476 (west) or 1453 (east) because they fought in armies.

Next came the administrators, posted in a similar way to the military, to freeze their extremities off in Germania or Britannia for boil their brains in the provinces of Syria or Egypt. Both would be served by official couriers, messengers and supply chains speeding along the famous Roman roads serviced by way stations with basic personal resupply and accommodation facilities (mansiones).

Merchants, of course, were very familiar with trade routes; the same ones were used for hundreds of years. Wealthier individuals made journeys for education and recreation and their households (free or slave) went with them.

Roman travelling coach carpentum (reconstruction), in the Römsich-Germanischen Museum in Cologne, Germany

How did people travel?

Travel could be on horseback, ox cart, litters, travelling coaches, ship, barge, mules or Shanks’s pony (on foot). Soldiers just yomped with baggage trains trailing behind them, although to keep these baggage trains from becoming too large, in 107 BC General Gaius Marius made each man carry his own armour, weapons, personal equipment and 15 days’ rations, about 50–60 pounds (22.5–27 kg) in total.

Legionaries were issued with a forked stick to carry their load on their shoulders and were nicknamed Marius’ Mules (muli mariani in Latin) due to the amount of gear they had to carry themselves.

A Roman officer on the road

Officers like my tribune Lucius Apulius in JULIA PRIMA would have ridden a horse, had a servant riding a mule and made use of the mansiones if travelling away from his unit or between postings. At a fort, they would be lodged with other officers and even dine with the commander. Which is what happens to Apulius on his long journey from Britannia to Virunum in Roman Noricum (approximately modern Austria). But he was rained on and hated sleet and snow like any other serving soldier and was pleased to be wearing his paenula scortea, leather poncho as he rode along.

So what route did Apulius take in AD 370?

Firstly, he took a ship (military transport) across the Oeanus Britannicus from Dubris to Bononia (called Gesoriacum until the end of the third century), then on to Durocortorum (Rheims) and Vesontio (Besançon) on horseback. Apart from his own horse and the mule his servant rode, Apulius hired a travelling cart with driver and relief driver for his belongings and equipment.

Then it started to get sticky…

Apulius’s journey (Original map www.euratlas.com)

The Roman Empire’s effective northern border (limes) in AD 370 ran along the line of the the Rhine and Danube rivers. Today, the passage along the upper Rhine valley via Basel is an important transalpine route with a multi-lane motorway and railway line. In Apulius’s time it was a vital axis between Gaul and the East. If control of that passage was lost, the empire would be split in two.

The city of Augusta Raurica to the east of today’s Basel was a prosperous trading town whose innkeepers and traders probably made a tidy profit from passing trade. However, about AD 300, following the loss of the right bank of the Rhine, the Roman army built a fort nearby called Castrum Rauracense.

During the 4th century, it grew in strategic importance; emperors Constantius II and Julian assembled their armies at there before marching to battle against the Alemanni, the ‘barbarians’ to the north. But Augusta Raurica’s physical vulnerability was shown up after its sacking by the Alemanni in 260 AD, so was resettled on a much smaller scale on the site of the castrum (modern Kaiseraugst).

Augusta Raurica (Kaiseraugst, Google Maps extract)

Here, Apulius was forced to change to mule trains and military escort. By 370 AD, slow moving carts and sole travellers (servants not counted) would have been easy pickings for any raiding parties. But the route was still relatively safe to Brigantium (Bregenz) where a Roman fleet was based to patrol Lake Constance. Not the easiest command with the ferocious Alemanni across the water, just waiting…

For the next stage, he needed a larger escort as he was crossing an open frontier zone where the risk of conflict with Alemanni war parties was almost inevitable, but once in Cambodumum (Kempten), he was back in Roman territory and relative safety on his way to Iuvavum (Salzburg) and Virunum, his posting in Noricum.

Contrast with today

Conveying belongings is easy for us today. We chuck them in the car, or a strong suitcase, a high tech backpack with Wi-Fi connectivity and take a plane or train. Luggage in Apulius’s time was roped packs, panniers on mules, wooden chests on carriages or wagons, none of which was guaranteed waterproof unless covered by leather. (My sincere thanks to fellow scribe Ruth Downie for sending me copies from Lionel Casson’s ‘Travel in the Ancient World’ and Ann Hyland’s ‘Equus: the Horse in the Roman World’ to clarify this.)

And time – it took time. Using Stanford University’s ORBIS and the Italian https://omnesviae.org, I calculated the journey time by each form of transport, double checking distances and physical landscape. And the more obvious routes in the area were starting to be inaccessible, not only from the weather, but as the empire literally lost ground. Apulius took about six weeks altogether.

Virunum amphitheatre during excavation (Photo: Wikipedia). Current photos (and video): https://www.alison-morton.com/2023/06/17/feeling-the-virunum-amphitheatre/

Today, to get to Maria Saal (nearest modern place to the site of Virunum), you can hop on a plane to Vienna, then one to Klagenfurt, hire a car and be there the same day seeing the same mountains Apulius would have seen. He may even have watched games in the amphitheatre being excavated in the photo above.

Find out what happened when the newly arrived Lucius met Julia, the daughter of Prince Bacausus in Virunum.

Hint – it didn’t go smoothly…

Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.

Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.

A passion for maps, and Julia's journey

I love maps. Even in the digital age, I still have a print road atlas. I was recently given an Ordnance Survey map of Roman Britain; I haven’t seen one since I was a kid. And, yes, it did cost 7/6 in old money at a time when a standard OS map of your local area was 1/11. And what was the use of a map that was around 2,000 years out of date and cost over three times a modern one?

Apart from the treasure of knowledge within it, the sheer pleasure of laying it out on a table and following in the steps of Romans. No scrolling or zooming in the 1960s, but even with those facilities now, I still prefer the paper version.

So what has this to do with JULIA PRIMA?

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to admit Julia’s going on a journey. 😉 I had the benefit of working it all out on a map when I was writing (and went down several rabbit holes in the process – map thrall). But I realise that my readers would necessarily know the area she travelled through or the Latin names of the towns, villages or rivers. Time for a map!

While royalty-free outlines were available on the Internet, practically all other ones were not. This is how it should be, as it takes a LOT of work to produce maps as I was to find out…

First of all, I printed off an outline of central southern Europe and using modern maps for reference, traced the course of rivers Danuvius (Danube), Dravus (Drava) and Aesontius (Soča/Isonzo) for the first part of Julia’s journey. Once fixed, I could use them as reference for the towns. I spent hours researching the names of what the towns were called in late Roman times. The bigger ones like Virunum, Tergeste (modern Trieste), Aquileia – no problem as I had the wonderful ORBIS and the DARE online maps.

The smaller settlements such as Caporetum (modern Kobarid in mountainous Slovenia) or Vallicula (Barcola in modern Italy) were a bit of a nightmare as sometimes they weren’t on the online map systems and required diving deep into obscure texts to dig out their existence, let alone names. Much joy on finding them! Some places changed their names such as Pietas Julia which was known in the late Empire as Pola (modern Pula).

I gave a chuckle when I found out that the Roman settlement of Pucinum/Castellum Pucinum was today the location for the modern Italian town of Prosecco! A “nobile vinum pucinum” is mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his “Naturalis Historia” as ‘rich in therapeutic properties’ produced ‘in the gulf of the Adriatic Sea, not far from the stony hill of the source of the Timavo river’. In the 1st century, Livia Drusilla, Augustus’s wife is said to have regularly purchased the wine. At the end of her long life (she was 86), she attributed her old age to its regular consumption.

And maps aren’t fun? I rest my case.

Google Maps 2022

I eventually found royalty free physical maps online (Hooray!) so from this stage, I went digital. Using Pixelmator software I turned them into black and white, bringing up the contrast to show mountainous areas. I then transferred all the information from my paper sketches and research onto a high resolution digital version. I only had to draw one river in digitally, the Aesontius, but it does wiggle round the mountains! Next came place names for which I used the trusty text boxes and finally the route which I inserted as dots with the digital pen tool.

Then I went and drank a glass of bubbly (Crémant de Loire which I prefer to Prosecco, may Livia and Pliny forgive me).

Here’s the final result which is the first of three maps in both the ebook and paperback versions of JULIA PRIMA.

Yes, it was a fair amount of work for an amateur mapmaker, but I enjoy fiddling around on the computer. Putting all those dots in to show the route made my eyes cross over at times!

Then I started on the Italian job…

Maps tells us so much about a country. In this instance I wanted to make Julia’s 4th century journey easier to follow for my readers.

And yes, I will be putting a map in my next book EXSILIUM. 😉

Discover more about JULIA PRIMA

Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.

Vive Roma Nova!

In October, I was interviewed by the regional press La Nouvelle République. As soon as I received the email from the reporter, I dashed into town to grab a paper copy.

Now I expected an eighth page at the bottom of the page. I’m an English author writing in English , even though I’ve lived in France for many years and become a French citizen. Imagine my surprise when I found my interview covered a whole page! A bit shocked, I paid the newsagent the 1€ 20 cents and staggered out the door. Perhaps I should have had a stiff brandy in the adjoining bar…

Even though the article is in French, regular readers of this blog will probably know most of the content inside out. But Roma Nova seems to have found friends in France. My neighbour had even cut out the article and saved it for me in case I hadn’t been able to get a paper copy.

If you’d like to read the online version, it’s here: https://www.lanouvellerepublique.fr//thouars/thouars-ses-romans-ecrits-a-misse-cartonnent-en-angleterre (May be behind a paywall.)

Onward Roma Nova! 😉

Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, a new Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, is now out.