Politica, amministrazione e propaganda lungo le strade romane dell’Italia centro settentrionale. Miliari e altre iscrizioni viarie.

In the Roman world, the road networks acquires a key role. They become the vehicle for penetration of the language, ideas, civilization: their efficiency and capillarity allow laws, religious and political messages to reach the farthest regions of the empire. The major arteries are the main way of penetration in any territory under the influence of Rome and at the same time represent the structure that organize all activities related to governance of the empire. So, the Roman road network manifests itself as the main factor of unification of the peninsula and west of the ancient world under Roman rule, unification that does not only includes the military, political or economic aspects, but that also becomes a social, cultural and civic event. In this context, the streets acquire a great relevance that leads them to become an important place of communication and that gives to the messages placed on them a meaning that transcends the mere content. As the title of this work suggest, this study takes place on two levels of research: an analytical study of the artifacts and the inscriptions engraved on them, which builds the inscriptions catalog, and a more interpretative part, focused on investigating in which forms the Roman government made politics and propaganda through these inscriptions. The study includes all categories of support that could be linked with a public highway: milestones, honorary columns, slabs, inscriptions on bridges, tunnels and on rocks. The gathering considered the inscriptions relating to territorial roads and placed by the central government, thus excluding only the inscription from urban contexts, inscriptions referring to interventions by local officers or evergeti and finally inscription about private works. The epigraphic texts were examined visually, they were drawn and photographed whenever it was possible, that is when they went not missing and when they have been granted the vision by the institutions responsible for their preservation. They were categorized into descriptive records, which were printed in a summary form and attached to this work through a special apparatus. They are also part of a GIS system used for the organization of the research. The numbering follows a topographic order: the inscriptions were numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals along each road proceeding, as far as possible, from west to east and from south to north. Sometimes, archaeological findings (miliari) without inscriptions were included in the catalog, coming from a context of road furniture, therefore, most probably in a context of works of road maintenance. These findings, by the reason that are not generally attributable to an emperor, were not used for research purposes but it was preferred, however, to indicate their presence to complete the description of the road where they belong. This work focuses over central and northern Italy, an area taht seems to provide a representative historical-geographical sample by virtue of its geographical, cultural and political / administrative heterogeneity. Due to the close connection between the messages and their cultural and administrative context, in this research ancient divisions were considered instead of current regional boundaries and demarcations. Although these divisions changed widely over the chronological period considered, an important reference point is surely made by the division of Italy into regions implemented by Augustus at the end of the long process of conquest and Romanization of the Republican period. This divisions gave new stability to borders, which were reorganized by Diocletian not before three centuries had passed. Hence, this work considers the territories that, in Augustus' division, formed the regiones VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, as described by Pliny the Elder. In essence, it was considered that district whose south boundaries were the Esino and Tiber rivers (southern limits of the regiones VI and VII), north boundaries were the same administrative boundaries of Italy nowadays, west and east boundaries were the Varo and the Arsa rivers. The study of texts was carried out following the separation into republican and imperial periods and organized for each official and emperor, trying to grasp the historical evolution of interventions on administration, politics and propaganda.