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Tarraco (Tarragona)
Tarraco is the ancient name of the current city of Tarragona (Catalonia, Spain). It was the oldest Roman settlement on the Iberian Peninsula. It became the capital of the Roman province of Hispania Citerior during the period of the Roman Republic, and of Hispania Tarraconensis following the latter's creation during the Roman Empire. In 2000, the archaeological ensemble of Tarraco was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. History Origins and the Second Punic War The municipality was inhabited in pre-Roman times by Iberians who had commercial contacts with the Greeks and Phoenicians who settled on the coast. The Iberian colonies were mainly located in the Ebro Valley. Evidence of Iberian colonies in the municipality of Tarragona has been dated to the 5th century BC. References in the literature to the presence of Iberians in Tarraco are ambiguous. Livy mentions an ''oppidum parvum'' (small town) called ''Cissis'' and Polybius talks about a polis called Kissa (Κίσσα) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amphitheatre Of Tarraco
Tarragona Amphitheatre is a Roman amphitheatre in the city of Tarraco, now Tarragona, in the Catalonia region of north-east Spain. It was built in the 2nd century AD, sited close to the forum of this provincial capital.The public structures of Roman Tarraco are extensively discussed in Duncan Fishwick, ''The Imperial Cult in the Latin West'' The amphitheatre could house up to 15,000 spectators, and measured . History It was built at the end of 1st century AD and the start of 2nd century AD, down from the walls and facing the sea. There are remains of a large inscription dating to the reign of Elagabalus (3rd century AD) and located in the podium. In 259, during the persecution of Christians by Emperor Valerian, the city's bishop, Fructuosus, and his deacons, Augurius and Eulogius, were burned alive. After Christianity became the official religion of the empire, the amphitheatre lost its original functions. The following years some of the building's stones were used to build a b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carthage
Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classical world. The city developed from a Canaanite Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic empire which dominated large parts of the Southwest Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. The legendary Queen Alyssa or Dido, originally from Tyre, is regarded as the founder of the city, though her historicity has been questioned. According to accounts by Timaeus of Tauromenium, she purchased from a local tribe the amount of land that could be covered by an oxhide. As Carthage prospered at home, the polity sent colonists abroad as well as magistrates to rule the colonies. The ancient city was destroyed in the nearly-three year siege of Carthage by the Roman Republic during the Third Punic War in 146 BC and then re-developed as Roman Car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliny The Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ''Naturalis Historia'' (''Natural History''), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus: Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume work ''Bella Germaniae'' ("The History of the German Wars"), which is no longer extant. ''Bella Germaniae'', which began where Aufidius Bassus' ''Libri Belli Germanici'' ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus and Suetonius. Tacitus—who many scholars agree had never travelled in Germania—used ''Bella Germani ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Publius Cornelius Scipio (consul 218 BC)
Publius Cornelius Scipio (died 211 BC) was a general and statesman of the Roman Republic and the father of Scipio Africanus. A member of the Cornelia ''gens'', Scipio served as consul in 218 BC, the first year of the Second Punic War. He sailed with his army from Pisa with the intention of confronting Hannibal in Hispania. Stopping at Massalia (today Marseille) to replenish his supplies, he was shocked to discover that Hannibal's army had moved from Hispania and was crossing the Rhône. Scipio disembarked his army and marched to confront Hannibal, who, by now, had moved on. Returning to the fleet, he entrusted the command of his army to his brother Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus and sent him off to Hispania to carry on with the originally intended mission. Scipio returned to Italy to take command of the troops fighting in Cisalpine Gaul. On his return to Italy, he advanced at once to meet Hannibal. In a sharp cavalry engagement near the Ticinus, a tributary of the Po river ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Iberian Coinage
The history of ancient Iberian coinage begins as early as the fifth century BC, but widespread minting and circulation in the Iberian peninsula did not begin until late in the third century, during the Second Punic War. Civic coinages - emissions made by individual cities at their own volition - continued under the first two and a half centuries of Roman control until ending in the mid-first century AD. Some non-civic coins were minted on behalf of Roman emperors during this period and continued to be minted after the cessation of the civic coinages. After the cessation of the civic coinages, these Imperial coins were the only coins minted in Iberia until the coins of the Suebi and Visigoths. Ancient Iberia was connected to the eastern and central Mediterranean, and so there are links to the Greek, Roman and Punic ( Carthaginian) civic coinages. Yet there are also many points of difference that reflect dynamics within Iberia itself. The colonial background: 6th century BC to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Conquest Of Hispania
The Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was a process by which the Roman Republic seized territories in the Iberian Peninsula that were previously under the control of native Celtic, Iberian, Celtiberian and Aquitanian tribes and the Carthaginian Empire. The Carthaginian territories in the south and east of the peninsula were conquered in 206 BC during the Second Punic War. Control was gradually extended over most of the Iberian Peninsula without annexations. It was completed after the end of the Roman Republic (27 BC), by Augustus, the first Roman emperor, who annexed the whole of the peninsula to the Roman Empire in 19 BC. This conquest of the peninsula started with the Roman acquisition of the former Carthaginian territories in southern Hispania and along the east coast as a result of their defeating the Carthaginians (206 BC) during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), after which the Carthaginian forces left the peninsula. This resulted in an ongoing Roman territoria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Punic War
The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of three wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Italy and Iberia, but also on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia and, towards the end of the war, in North Africa. After immense materiel and human losses on both sides the Carthaginians were defeated. Macedonia, Syracuse and several Numidian kingdoms were drawn into the fighting, and Iberian and Gallic forces fought on both sides. There were three main military theatres during the war: Italy, where Hannibal defeated the Roman legions repeatedly, with occasional subsidiary campaigns in Sicily, Sardinia and Greece; Iberia, where Hasdrubal, a younger brother of Hannibal, defended the Carthaginian colonial cities with mixed success before moving into Italy; and Africa, where Rome finally won the war. The First Punic War had ended in a Roman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empúries
Empúries ( ca, Empúries ) was an ancient city on the Mediterranean coast of Catalonia, Spain. Empúries is also known by its Spanish name, Ampurias ( es, Ampurias ). The city Ἐμπόριον ( el, Ἐμπόριον, Emporion, meaning "trading place", ''cf.'' emporion) was founded in 575 BC by Greek colonists from Phocaea. After the invasion of Gaul from Iberia by Hannibal the Carthaginian general in 218 BC, the city was occupied by the Romans (Latin: ). In the Early Middle Ages, the city's exposed coastal position left it open to marauders and it was abandoned. Empúries is located within the Catalan comarca of Alt Empordà on Costa Brava. The ruins are midway between the town of L'Escala and the tiny village of Sant Martí d'Empúries. History Empúries was founded on a small island at the mouth of the river Fluvià, in a region inhabited by the Indigetes (at the present time, the mouth of the Fluvià is about 6 km to the north). This city came to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus
Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus (died 211 BC) was a Roman general and statesman during the third century BC. He played a major part in the Second Punic War establishing Roman Rule in the east of the Iberian Peninsula and tying up several Carthaginian armies keeping them from reinforcing Hannibal. Family Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus was a member of the patrician family of the Cornelii Scipiones. His father was Lucius Cornelius Scipio consul of 259 BC, the son of the patrician censor of 280, Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus. His younger brother was Publius Cornelius Scipio consul of 218, father of the famous Scipio Africanus (the most famous of the Scipios). Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio was nicknamed Calvus (the bald) to distinguish him from his uncle, another Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, who was nicknamed Asina (donkey) and who had been consul twice during the First Punic War. Consulship Gnaeus Cornelius was elected consul for 222 BC, with Marcus Claudius Marcellus as his co-consul. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polybius
Polybius (; grc-gre, Πολύβιος, ; ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , which covered the period of 264–146 BC and the Punic Wars in detail. Polybius is important for his analysis of the mixed constitution or the separation of powers in government, his in-depth discussion of checks and balances to limit power, and his introduction of "the people", which influenced Montesquieu's ''The Spirit of the Laws'', John Locke's ''Two Treatises of Government'', and the framers of the United States Constitution. The leading expert on Polybius for nearly a century was F. W. Walbank (1909–2008), who published studies related to him for 50 years, including a long commentary of his ''Histories'' and a biography. Early life Polybius was born around 200 BC in Megalopolis, Greece, Megalopolis, Arcadia (region), Arcadia, when it was an active member of the Achaean League. The town was revived, along with other Achaean states, a century before he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Livy
Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Ancient Rome, Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on familiar terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and a friend of Augustus, whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he exhorted to take up the writing of history. Life Livy was born in Patavium in northern Italy (Roman Empire), Italy, now modern Padua, probably in 59 BC. At the time of his birth, his home city of Patavium was the second wealthiest on the Italian peninsula, and the largest in the province of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy). Cisalpine Gaul was merged in Roman Italy, Italy proper during his lifetime and its inhabitants were given Roman citizenship by Julius Caesar. In his works, Livy often expressed his deep affection an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
