Las Cabezas de San Juan is a wretched little village, which inscriptions found in its vicinity have decided to be the Ugia[43] of the Romans. It is situated on a knoll, commanding an extensive view over the circumjacent flat country, and some years since contained a population of a thousand or twelve hundred souls. But, having been the hotbed wherein Riego’s conspiracy was brought to unnatural maturity, it was razed to the ground during the short contest that restored Ferdinand to a despotic throne, and “all its pleasant things laid waste."
From hence to Los Palacios is ten miles. The country is flat, and but partially cultivated. A short league before reaching Los Palacios, a long ruined bridge, called El Alcantarilla, is seen at a little distance off the road on the right. In the time of Swinburne, this bridge appears to have been passable, and an inscription was then sufficiently perfect to announce its Roman origin. It was probably raised to carry a road from Lebrija to Utrera across a marshy tract, which in winter is apt to be flooded by the Salado de Moron; or perhaps the road over it may have been directed on Dos Hermanos, which is known to be the Roman town of Orippo.
Los Palacios is a clean compact village, of about 1,000 inhabitants. A plain extends for many miles on all sides of it, but a slight, perhaps artificial, mound rises slightly above the general level of the place on its eastern side, and bears the weight of its ruined castle: the walls of the village itself are also fast crumbling to the dust. The inns are miserable; but a Spanish nobleman, with whom we had become acquainted at Xeres, had obligingly furnished us with a letter of introduction to a gentleman of the place, who entertained us most hospitably, and very reluctantly—for he wished much to detain us—gave orders to the dueña of his household to have the usual breakfast of chocolate and bread fried in lard prepared for us by daybreak on the following morning.
From Los Palacios to Seville the distance is reckoned five “leguas regulares,” but it is barely fifteen miles. The country to the north of the village is very fruitful, and becomes hilly as one proceeds. At about nine miles there is a solitary venta, on the margin of a stream that comes down from Dos Hermanos; which village is situated about a league off on the right.
It is a matter of some little difficulty to make any of the roads between Cadiz and Seville (that is, from Port St. Mary’s onwards) agree with the route laid down in the Itinerary of Antoninus. The distance of the Portus Gaditanus from Hispalis is therein stated to be seventy-six Roman miles,[44] or, according to Florez, sixty-eight;[45] which miles, if computed to contain eight Olympic stadia each, are equal to seventy, and sixty-three British statute miles respectively; the actual distance from Puerto Santa Maria to Seville being, by the chaussée, sixty-six miles; by Lebrija and the marshes, fifty-two.
On comparing these distances, therefore, one would naturally be led to suppose that the Roman military way followed the circuitous line of the existent chaussée, but that monuments and inscriptions, which have been found at Las Cabezas de St. Juan and Dos Hermanos, prove those places to be the towns of Ugia and Orippo, mentioned in the Itinerary as lying upon the road. We are under the necessity, therefore, of adopting a line which reduces the distance from the Portus Gaditanus to Hispalis far below even that given by Florez.
The only way of meeting all these difficulties and premises seems to be by taking a smaller stadium than the Olympic. That of 666⅔ to a degree of the meridian[46] I have generally found to agree well with the actual distances of places in Spain, and it is a scale which we are warranted in adopting, since it is sometimes used by Strabo on the authority of Eratosthenes, and Pliny admits that no two persons ever agreed in the Roman measures.
Taking this scale, therefore (though a yet smaller would agree better), I fix the first station, Hasta, at a small table hill, even now called by the Spaniards La Mesa de Asta, lying N.N.W. of Xeres;[47] making the distance from the Portus Gaditanus sixteen miles, as in the Itinerary, instead of eight, as altered by Florez: a number, by the way, which scarcely agrees better with the actual distance from Port St. Mary’s to Xeres—at which latter place he fixes Hasta—than the sixteen miles of the original.
The next place mentioned in the Itinerary is Ugia; determined, as has been already stated, to have stood where Las Cabezas de San Juan is now situated; and the distance from the Mesa de Asta to this place, passing through Nebrissa (Lebrija—omitted in the Itinerary, as not being a convenient halting-place for the troops), agrees tolerably well with that specified, viz., twenty-seven Roman miles. The remaining distances, viz., twenty-four miles to Orippo (Dos Hermanos), and nine to Hispalis (Seville), agree yet better, though still somewhat below the scale I have adopted.
The appearance of Seville, approaching it on the side of the Marisma, is by no means imposing. Stretching as the city does along the bank of the Guadalquivír, its least diameter meets the view; and, from its standing on a perfect flat, the walls by which it is encircled conceal the most part of the houses, and take off from the height of the hundred spires of its churches—the lofty Giralda being the only conspicuous object that presents itself above them.