123‑124 A.D.: Hadrian Restores the Flaminia

The date is easy: Hadrian's eighth tribunician term was from Dec. 10, 123 to Dec. 9, 124.

The road in question can pretty much only be the Flaminia, the only substantial Roman road anywhere near here, pursuing a due northerly course from Narni on its way to Bevagna, where it will angle eastwards to follow the valley of the Topino. I interpret prolapsa and substructio to mean not that there was a sharp cave-in at some point which required a single substructure, but rather a general subsidence of the roadbed which required relaying all of it over some unspecified distance. Now the inscription was moved here from where it was found, "at S. Giacomo, 1½ miles from Massa Martana as you go towards Viepri [N of Massa], about 80 paces below [the road], where it was buried below ground, in a retaining wall for the repair of the road".

I've walked much of the area and it doesn't look particularly swampy, not now at least, and less so north than south of Massa, where an area of flat plain will collect runoff from the surrounding hills; in it, and less than 3 km away, on the Flaminia, large pieces of a Roman building now incorporated in the church of S. Maria in Pantano — where the Italian word pantano does mean "marsh" — part of the largest set of Roman remains to be found in the immediate area, with excavations underway.

  See also the Sep. 11, 1998 entry of my diary.