Zur Schiffbarkeit der oberen Donau in römischer Zeit

Abstract

"In early Roman times, before the mid third century A.D., the entire uppermost section of the Danube was navigable from the Fridingen Seepage on for Roman cargo prams and galleys of the Oberstimm type, and from Emerkingen on for liburnians of the large 'Haltern' type, of which only the basic dimensions are known. It was by ship, for example, that supplies could best be conveyed to the forts between the Swabian Jura (Ennetach) and the Iller River (Ulm). For many days every year, on the other hand, the westernmost citadel on the Danube, Hüfingen near Donaueschingen (on the Breg), was cut off from the section of the Danube downstream from Fridingen due to the loss of Danube water by seepage between Immendingen and Fridingen. It is no longer possible to judge whether or not this factor prevented shipping traffic: Supplies from Italy reached Rhaetia on the Via Claudia Augusta, which crossed the Alps and joined the road along the south bank of the Danube - and the Danube itself - at Burghöfe between Ulm and Augsburg. From there, the imported goods could be transported more efficiently and inexpensively by ship than by land. When the Alemannians overran the Danube Limes to the west of the embouchure of the river Iller in the mid third century, the Iller embouchure - i.e. in a certain sense, Ulm / the citadel of Febiana or, more specifically, its harbours - became the point of departure for Roman shipping downstream. This is the set of circumstances upon which Ammian's account of the imperial pretender Julian’s journey to Pannonia by way of the Danube is based." (author's abstract)