That I may not incur the reproach of “extreme confidence,” in venturing to publish an opinion differing from that of various learned antiquaries who have written on the subject, I will endeavour to show that my doubt has, at all events, some reasonable foundation to rest upon.
Supposing that the distances given in the Itinerary between Malaca and Calpe Carteia were respectively correct, but that the error—which, in consequence, was evident—had been made by over-estimating the length of the Roman mile in use at the period the Itinerary was compiled, I found, by dividing the actual distance into eighty-nine parts (following such an irregular line as a road, considering the ruggedness of the country, might be supposed to take), that it gave a scale of eighty-three and a third of such divisions to a degree of the meridian; a scale which, as I have observed in a former chapter, is mentioned by Strabo, on the authority of Eratosthenes, as one in use amongst the Romans.
Now, by measuring off twenty-one such parts along the indented line of coast from Malaga westward, to fix the situation of Suel, I find that, according to this scale, it would be placed about a mile beyond the Torre Blanca; that is, at the commencement of the fertile valley, which has been mentioned as stretching some way inland, and at the bottom of the bay, of which the rocky ledge occupied by the castle of Fuengirola forms the western boundary; certainly a much more suitable site, either for a commercial city, or for a fortress, than the low, rocky headland of Fuengirola, which neither affords enough space for a town to stand upon, nor is sufficiently elevated above the adjacent country, to have the command that was usually sought for in building fortresses previous to the invention of artillery.
Proceeding onwards, and measuring twenty-four divisions (of this same scale) from the point where I suppose Suel to have stood, along the yet rugged coast to the westward of Fuengirola, the site of Cilniana, the next station of the Itinerary, is fixed a little beyond where the town of Marbella now stands; another most probable spot for the Phœnicians or Romans to have selected for a station; as, in the first place, the proximity of the high, impracticable, Sierra de Juanel, would have enabled a fortress there situated to intercept most completely the communication along the coast; and, in the second, the vicinity of a fertile plain, and the valuable mines of Istan (from whence a fine stream flows), would have rendered it a desirable site for a port.
The next distance, thirty-four miles to Barbariana, brings me to the mouth of the Guadiaro, (which can be no other than the Barbesula of the Romans, if we suppose that the road continued, as heretofore, along the seashore); or, carries me across that river, and also the Sogarganta, which falls into it, if, striking inland, as soon as the nature of the country permitted, we imagine the road to have been directed by the straightest line to its point of destination.
Now, in the first case, the discovery of numerous vestigia, and inscriptions at a spot two miles up from the mouth, on the eastern bank of the Barbesula, (i. e. Guadiaro) have clearly proved that to be the position of the city[173] bearing the same name as the river. We must not, therefore, look in its neighbourhood for Barbariana; especially as the vestiges of this ancient town are twelve English miles from Carteia, whereas the distance from Barbariana to Carteia is stated in the Itinerary to be but ten Roman miles.
In the second case, having crossed the Sogarganta about a mile above its confluence with the Guadiaro, we arrive, at the end of the prescribed thirty-four miles from Cilniana, at the mouth of a steep ravine by which the existing road from Gaucin and Casares to San Roque ascends the chain of hills forming the southern boundary of the valley, and this spot is not only well calculated for a military station, but exceeds by very little the distance of ten miles to Carteia, specified in the Itinerary.
I suppose, therefore, that Barbariana stood here, where it would have been on the most direct line that a road could take between Estepona and Carteia, as well as on that which presented the fewest difficulties to be surmounted in the nature of the country.
I will now follow the Roman Itinerary as laid down by Mr. Carter, in his “Journey from Gibraltar to Malaga.”[174]
The first station, Suel, he fixes at the Castle of Fuengirola; the second, Cilniana, at the ruins of what he calls Old Estepona. These he describes as lying three leagues to the eastward of the modern town of that name, and upwards of a league to the westward of the Torre de las Bovedas, in the vicinity of which he assumes Salduba stood; but this very site of Salduba (i. e. the Torre de las Bovedas) is little more than two leagues from modern Estepona, being just half way between that place and Marbella—the distance from the one town to the other scarcely exceeding four leagues, or sixteen English miles—so that, in point of fact, he fixes Cilniana at four miles to the eastward of Estepona, instead of three leagues.