A Gadibus ad ostium Albis fluminis. Considerations on the Symbolic Image of Gades in the Res gestae.

Abstract

The Res Gestae Divi Augusti are, first and foremost, a work of political propaganda. We can generally say that geographical discourse is one of the crucial elements of Augustan propaganda; the use and interpretation of certain toponyms being determined by the will to evoke ideological constructs which would support the emperor´s foreign policy, and deflect any criticism towards its conservative direction. Such constructs have their roots in conceptions of the world which pre-date this time, especially when it comes to the Western border, which will now undergo a process of re-mythologization designed to ignore or blur the data provided by Hellenistic science, in the service of a conception of the Roman empire as a power ideologically compelled to expand to the last limit of known territory. In our present work, and in line with these ideological processes which have been already explored by other scholars, we intend to study the use of the expression Oceanum a Gadibus as a limit of the Augustan empire in the text of the Res Gestae, stressing the importance acquired in this context by the “mythological vision” of the island city in the Southwest of Baetica -in connection with the no less mythologized Ocean-, as well as the contrast between this mythologized vision with the reality of a space which had been part of the Roman administration for two centuries. Through a comparison with descriptive passages in geographies and histories of the period, such as those by Strabo, Pomponius Mela and Pompeius Trogus, we will also explore the problems raised by this double vision, the solutions offered by each author, and the degree of adaptation of their respective works to the guidelines of the reigning power.