Saint Patrick & Names along the Antonine wall

[MonsGraupius]

We are told there are seven forts along the wall, we are given a list from the Ravenna Cosmography in which the sixth is "MedioNemeton".

I must be missing a step, but I'm not sure where.

The text of the Ravenna Cosmography reads: "On the other hand, there are towns precisely in Britain, connected one to another in a straight path, where Britain itself is seen to be the narrowest from sea to sea, namely: Velunia, Volitanio, Pexa, Begesse, Colanica, Medionemeton, Subdobiadon, Litana, Cibra, Credigone".

There seem to be ten places, not seven. Or eleven, if you want to split Medionemeton into two.

Good point. It says "in a line where ... the island is thinnest" not "along the Antonine wall".

However, because others wrongly interpreted that "in a line" as being ONLY on the Antonine wall, they became fixated in trying to make the list fit the forts. That meant previous attempts tried to shoehorn the names to the forts, but they simply do not fit linguistically and if you start counting the smaller forts there are just too many. The result has been no accepted allocation of names. Which I think means there is clearly something wrong with that assumption that the names are the names of forts ONLY on the wall.

However, Nemthur, the birthplace of the 5th century Saint Patrick ought to be on the Ravenna Cosmography. And by far the best fit is Nemeton - which is on this list as part of the sixth name "in a line": MedioNemeton. We are told there were seven forts along the wall. 

Given the main occupation was along the Antonine wall and it is roughly straight - it's hard to have a line that does not include the wall so we expect the main places on the wall to be present. But as there are more names on the RC than the seven we are told were on the wall, it is reasonable to think that the line should extend beyond the wall. And there is evidence the defences did extend along the Clyde. For example Dumbarton is not on the wall but there was evidence it was a Roman fort defending a port used to supply the wall. There are several other places on the Clyde.

Also, it's not impossible given the way text was squashed into available paper, that during one of the copies, that more names got added to the line than there should have been.

But if we go back to Nemthur, the known birthplace of Saint Patrick, it ought to be on the Ravenna Cosmography. And by far the best fit is Nemeton - which is on this list as part of MedioNemeton. We are told there were seven forts along the wall. If we assume Medio-Nemeton was the combination of two names, Nemeton is  then the seventh at Old Kilpatrick. Nemeton is a close fit to Nemthur (as Th is often written T in other languages).

The next is Subdobiadon and many others have looked at Subdobaidon and said it looked like Dumbarton - so the closeness of that match is not in dispute.

The previous big fort with evidence for late occupation is at Balmuildy. Bal is  gaelic prefix meaning "settlement of" .. so its original name is contained in "Muildy" - the l is silent in the local dialect where the place is now pronounced almost as "Balmidy". So it doesn't take a lingustic genius to see that Muildy is close to Medio.

And finally, if you are not aware, the standard for attributing a Roman era place name is not that high. Many other Roman era names have been attributed with absolutely no compelling argument nor linguistic match. It many instances it seems that someone just had a spare name left over in an area where there was a spare place. The first person cautiously says "I suggest it may be". The next person says "is likely to be" the next "probably is" and by the time it gets to Wikipedia it becomes "is known to"

In contrast, the name matches I have, show a run of three good matches with compelling historical evidence to link Nemeton to Old Kilpatrick. You often get a name on an Itinerary with a place - but no obvious linguistic match. You also get good linguistic matches but no firm geolocation. But with these names we have BOTH a good linguistic match AND because they are on an ordered list, they're geolocated relative to the seventh name at the end of the wall.