Note 2883 — PORTUS ITIUS

The distance by the new military road is, as Lewin warns his readers, much less.

Mariette (Lettre à M. Bouillet, &c., pp. 16, 51) actually holds that the ulterior portus was the harbour of Bononia (see p. 591, n. 1, infra), as distinguished from that of Gesoriacum! The ulterior portus, he says, is generally assumed to have been eight Roman miles from the Portus Itius, simply because the eighteen ships which carried Caesar’s cavalry were detained eight miles from the Portus Itius by contrary winds. But, he insists, Caesar does not say that the place where the eighteen ships were detained was a harbour: he merely indicates the harbour where the cavalry embarked, without saying where it was; it was not the same place as that at which the vessels had been detained some days before.

I only notice this theory because Mariette was a really eminent man. If it were necessary to refute it, it would be sufficient to say, first, that, as Caesar tells us (B. G., iv, 22, § 4) that the eighteen ships (which he reserved for his cavalry) were detained by contrary winds at a place eight miles from the harbour which sheltered the rest of the fleet, and in the next sentence but two says that he ordered the cavalry to advance to the ulterior portus (which he had not mentioned before), and embark, the inevitable conclusion is that the place where the eighteen ships had been detained was the ulterior portus; secondly, that if the ulterior portus had been virtually in juxta-position with the port from which Caesar sailed, he would certainly have taken care that they sailed along with him.