Bononia, the Roman Bologna: Archaeoastronomy and Chronology

TL;DR

This paper examines the orientation of Roman town Bononia, revealing discrepancies between historical dates and astronomical alignments, and suggests reinterpreting its layout based on later Roman recolonization and festivals.

Contribution

It demonstrates the importance of considering Roman chronology and calendar discrepancies in archaeoastronomical studies of Roman urban layouts.

Findings

Bononia's layout aligns with festivals of Octavian's Roman recolonization.

Discrepancies exist between historical Roman dates and astronomical orientations.

Alignment with festivals is more consistent under the later Roman layout hypothesis.

Abstract

In an article written by Giulio Magli on the orientation of the Roman towns, Bononia, the Roman Bologna, is given as a specific example to support Magli's thesis on the existence of preferred solar alignments of the urban layout. Assuming that the Roman towns had been oriented to the sunrise on a given day of the year, Magli suggested possible preferred alignments according to Roman festivals, in particular the festival of Terminalia. Of Bononia, we know the date of foundation as Roman colony in 189 BC, given by Livy. We will show that, according to Roman chronology and Republican calendar, it is impossible that Bononia had been oriented to the sunrise on the day given by Livy. The discrepancy is huge. Moreover, the direction of the decumanus cannot match the dates of Terminalia for 189 BC. However, if we consider that the layout that we see today is that of a recolonization under Octavian, we can have a certain agreement between the direction of the decumanus and the sunrise on the day of Terminalia (within three days), and a perfect agreement with the day of the festival of Armilustrium. In the proposed discussion, we will stress in particular the problem of the discrepancy between the historical dates of Roman chronology and the Julian dates, those that we can find according to an astronomical analysis. This problem is general and must be properly considered in any archaeoastronomical analysis of Roman towns.