De Augusta Emerita a Olisipo por Ebora : uma leitura do território a partir da rede viária

The existence of three main itineraries between the capital of Lusitania and the maritime harbour of Olisipo is attested to by archaeological evidence and by written, literary and epigraphic sources from the Roman period. Among this group of written sources, the text known as the Antonine Itinerary is the main document. The object of study is one of these itineraries, connecting Augusta Emerita to Olisipo through Ebora.

The interpretation of the Antonine Itinerary, a group of texts known through its medieval copies, is still open to debate in current scientific research. There are several views regarding its nature and purpose, chronology and, especially, regarding the correspondence between the itineraries descriptions and the road network, which indeed existed in the territory during the Roman period. In order to overcome these difficulties of interpretation, it seems relevant to understand the topological nature of the Antonine Itinerary and seek to understand the data structure that it presents.

Therefore, this thesis revises current available information, in order to define, within the territory, a plausible route, relying on archaeological, epigraphic and historical data. Starting with the definition of a route and of a wide band encircling the conventional representation of it’s axis, it seeks to understand the manner in which the itinerary is articulated with the occupation and organisation of the territory.

The analysis of the information thus analysed culminated in a proposal of interpretation of the sequence of mile indications for this path in the Antonine Itinerary: it defends the thesis that the numerals expressed in these sequences correspond to distances between stations, in a counting scheme limited to boundaries of administrative territory within the route. In other words, it defends that the mile indications have their origin in the capital of each territorial unit, irradiating from this caput uiae in the different directions of the roads until they reached the territory of the adjoining city.