The great Gallic league. Page 8. J Dassié

Conditions of measurement of the distances

1° Errors of recopy.

The documents result from successive recopies so many that the values indicated cannot be regarded any more as completely representative of the original. Confusions between X and a V whose jambs cross a little too high are innumerable. In the same way, confusion in the number of final bars (XVIIII translated by XVIII or reciprocally) is very frequent .

2° Units used.

These documents are the sum of many compilations whose values are not always relating to same units . There can be mixture of leagues and the miles, and even, often, assimilation of the romanized league with the Gallic league. Sometimes the analysis makes it possible to detect a change of unit between various segments of a route (appendix II-3).

 3° The real advance. The stages mentioned are sometimes rather large and the real course can borrow various routes between perfectly attested points. It will be essential to corroborate by other sources the validity of the way selected, by studying all the local observations of the physical presence of the way.

4° The milstones ones.

It is fortunately of different monuments which crossed the centuries without recopies if not deteriorations. They are the milliary columns, undeniable documents. We will be interested in those presenting of the numerical values and more especially in those carrying multiple inscriptions of distance (these multiple inscriptions often authorize a real localization of the initial establishment, by methods of triangulation). The setting in report/ratio of these indications with measurements of distance such as one can do them today will provide the surest elements as regards metric of the ancient ways.

Without stop, it will be necessary to start the assured localizations and the distances known to define the module of distance really used and to apply it with precaution to the close segments.

Metric of the ways.

The milestones, by their dimensions, their facility of identification and their survival during centuries, always played the role of a centre of attraction, of accretion, whose demonstrations last in the topographic and cartographic modern frame . The existance of metric of a way implies, throughout supposed way, the presence of reference marks characteristic (roads, paths, wayside cross, crossings, limiting administrative, wood etc) occurring with regular, revealing distances of an ancient demarcation. One will move with the length of the way of the transparent rules, graduated on the various scales of the maps and the required units. If it were actually limited and if the good module were found, a certain number of successive coincidences will appear then. As soon as their number exceeds three or four, the probabilities show that the chance cannot play any role any more and that the way presents well the topographic remanence of an ancient demarcation.

Fig 2. Museum of Aquitaine, Bordeaux. Babinots'milestone, in Saint Ciers-sur-Gironde.

 

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