[52] Low and disorderly people.
[53] Florez Medallas descubiertas, &c.
[54] Old Seville.
[55] De Bell. Civ.
[56] Hollond—intending, of course, the Itipa of the Itinerary, since the city of that name, mentioned by Pliny, was on the right bank of the Guadalquivír; and from medals discovered of it, whereon a fish is borne, may be concluded to have stood on the very margin of the river.
[57] The gallant and talented author of the “History of the Peninsular War” has fallen into some slight topographical errors (caused, probably, by the extraordinary inaccuracy of the Spanish maps) in describing the movements of the contending armies. He describes, for instance, the French as obliging the Duke of Albuquerque to abandon his position at Carmona (where he had hoped to cover both Seville and Cadiz), by moving from Ecija upon Utrera (i.e. in rear of the Spanish army), along “a road by Moron, shorter” than that leading to the same place through Carmona. But so far from this road by Moron being “shorter,” it is yet more circuitous than the chaussée; and, moreover, by skirting the foot of the Ronda mountains, it is both bad and hilly.
He furthermore represents the Duke of Albuquerque as falling back from Utrera upon Xeres, with all possible speed, and, nevertheless, taking Lebrija in his way, which town is, at least, eight miles out of the direct road. A French account (La Pène, Campagne de 1810) says, the Spanish army fell back from Carmona “par le chemin le plus direct, Utrera et Arcos sur Xeres,"—an error equally glaring, for the chaussée is the shortest road from Utrera to Xeres;—in fact, it is as direct as a road can well be, and leaves Arcos some twelve miles on the left! We may suppose, in attempting to reconcile these discrepant accounts, that the main body of the duke’s army retreated from Utrera to Xeres by the chaussée; the cavalry by Arcos, to cover its right flank during the march; and that the road by Lebrija was taken by the troops withdrawn from Seville, as being the most direct route from that city to Xeres.
[58] Don Maldonado Saavedra viewed it in this light, imagining that, in the Itinerary of Antoninus from Cadiz to Cordoba, two distinct roads were referred to; one proceeding direct, by way of Seville, whence it was taken up by another road, afterwards described, to Cordoba; the other (starting again from Cadiz) traversing the Serranía de Ronda to Antequera, and proceeding thence to Cordoba by Ulía. Florez, however, disputes this hypothesis, conceiving that but one route is intended, and that from Seville onwards it was given, not as a direct road, but merely as one by which troops might be marched if occasion required. But why, if such were the case, a road should have been made that increased the distance from Seville to Antequera from 85 to 121 miles, he does not explain; and I confess, therefore, it seems to me, that Don Maldonado Saavedra’s supposition is the more probable. The distances, however, between the modern places which he has named as corresponding with those mentioned in the Itinerary do not at all agree; and he also, in laying down the road from Cadiz to Antequera, has made it unnecessarily circuitous. The following towns will be found to answer much better with those mentioned in the Roman Itinerary, and the line connecting them is one of the most practicable through the Serranía.
Iter a Gadis Corduba, milia plus minus 295 sic.
| Roman miles. | |
| Ad pontem (Puente Zuazo) m. p. m. | 12 |
| Portu Gaditano (Puerto Santa Maria) | 14 |
| Hasta (near La Mesa de Asta) | 16 |
| Ugia (Las Cabezas de San Juan) | 27 |
| Orippo (Dos Hermanos) | 24 |
| Hispali (Seville) | 9 |
| (returning now to the Puente Zuazo, we have to) | |
| Basilippo (a rocky mound and ruins between Paterna and Alcalà de los Gazules) | 21 |