Milestones and capitals

[Robert Vermaat]

A question received from a friend:

Water Newton/Durobrivae was originally a vicus, but there are suggestions it was upgraded later to a civitas capital. The main logic for this is that a Roman milestone was found which measures it distance from Water Newton/Durobrivae and that, allegedly, Roman milestones only measure distances from civitas capitals or provincial capitals. However, there seems a lot of uncertainty in Britain whether this idea, that Roman milestones only measure distances from civitas capitals or provincial capitals is actually true. So the late status of Water Newton/Durobrivae is unresolved.

There are not that many Roman milestones that have been found in Britain, but it seems to me that with all the Roman milestones that have been found in Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain etc, somebody must know whether this basic idea is true or not. Do you know anything about it, or know anybody else who might?

[Flavius Inismeus]

"Roman milestones only measure distances from civitas capitals or provincial capitals"

That's too restrictive, I think. "Roughly speaking, the capita are either military posts or places of preëminent political or commercial importance." So wrote Laing in 1908. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Jo...arum*.html There are examples of Roman coloniae serving as capita, or some places significant otherwise. "On a stone of the second century we find Sumelocenna as caput; it was the chief place not of a tribe, but of an imperial saltus."

I have no access to CIL XVII, don't know whether its authors have made any general statements on the question.