Library › Egeria › Pilgrimage of Etheria
Pilgrimage of Etheria
Egeria, tr. McClure and Feltoe, 1919
d3
3. Etheria’s Route (to and from Constantinople)
We have, of course, no hint of the route taken by Etheria from her home in the extreme west of Europe as far as Constantinople and back again, unless her mention of the river Rhone be taken as indicating that she crossed it in her journey (possibly at Arles).1 But it is interesting to note that, nearly fifty years before her, the anonymous “Pilgrim of Bordeaux” gives the route which she pursued, and that may possibly have been Etheria’s too. She went out by land, she tells us, across the north of Italy, through Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia, Dacia and Thrace; while on her return she embarked at Aulon in Epirus and crossed the South Adriatic to Hydruntum (Otranto) and reached home by Rome and Milan.
Notes
- Dom Férotin (p. 31) also suggests that another hint is the statement of Peter the Deacon (twelfth century), who made large use of her narrative in his tract De Sanctis Locis, that she knew the flavour of the fish caught in the Mediterranean, but surely this is a little far-fetched.