Listed 36 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "PORTUGAL Country IBERIAN PENINSULA" .
LISBON (Town) LISBOA
Olisipo (Olioseipon, Ptol. ii. 5. § 4), a city of Lusitania, on the
right bank of the Tagus, and not far from its mouth. The name is variously written.
Thus Pliny (iv. 35) has Olisippo; so also the Itin. Ant. pp. 416, 418, seq. In
Mela (iii. 1. § 6), Solinus (c. 23), &c., we find Ulyssippo, on account probably
of the legend mentioned in Strabo, which ascribed its foundation to Ulysses, but
which is more correctly referred to Odysseia in Hispania Baetica. Under the Romans
it was a municipium, with the additional name of Felicitas Julia. (Plin. l. c.)
The neighbourhood of Olisipo was celebrated for a breed of horses of remarkable
fleetness, which gave rise to the fable that the mares were impregnated by the
west wind. (Plin. viii. 67; Varr. R. R. ii. , 19; Col. vi. 27.) It is the modern
Lisboa or Lisbon.
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
PORTUGAL (Country) IBERIAN PENINSULA
ANGRA DO HEROISMO (Town) PORTUGAL
Gabinete da Zona Classificada de Angra do Heroismo
ALJUSTREL (Town) PORTUGAL
Vipasca (Aljustrel) Alentejo, Portugal.
A village near Beja which exploited copper, gold, and silver mines. A structure
which served perhaps as the administrative center has been partially uncovered,
E of the mine. A necropolis, however, has been completely explored.
The political disturbances of A.D. 260-270 seem to have reduced mining
activity. In the shafts (square or circular, ca. 1 m in diameter or on a side)
and in the galleries (1 m wide, max. ht. 1.2 m) were found baskets for carrying
the ore, reels, winches, pulleys, spoons, and gutters made of oak. One gallery,
750 m long and 60 m deep, 20 m below the water level, apparently served as a drainage
channel. Since the Roman works went down to 120 m, there must have been some method
of raising the water from the lower levels up to this channel or gallery. In the
slag were found two bronze tablets: the first contains the measures in effect
for the local mining district (inetallum vipascense); the second, passages of
the laws referring to the Roman mines. The finds have been distributed among the
museums of Aljustrel and Beja, and the National Museum
J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
BEZA (Town) PORTUGAL
Pax Julia (Beja) Alentejo, Portugal.
Mentioned by Ptolemy (2.5), it was made a colonia by Julius Caesar or Octavian. It was the seat of one of the three judicial districts into which Augustus divided Lusitania, and minted coins in the time of Octavius. The fortifications, reconstructed in the Middle Ages over the remains of the Roman ones, retained the three early gates: Aviz, Mertola, and Evora. Only the gate of Evora remains today. The foundations of a temple have been discovered, but were covered again.
J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
BRAGA (Town) BRAGA
Bracara Augusta (Braga) Minho, Portugal.
It is mentioned by Ptolemy (2.6) and Pliny (HN 4.20) who refers to the city as
Bracarum oppidum Augusta, and the designation as an oppidum suggests that a settlement
existed before the time of Augustus. There are, however, no traces of occupation
before the 1st c. A.D. except for one small fragment of Campanian C ware and some
rare coins. Around the city were many forts of the Bracari, a tribe which fiercely
resisted the troops of Decimus Junius Brutus (137 B.C.).
The city became the seat of one of the judicial districts of Tarraconensis,
the coventus bracaraugustanus. It was already an important economic center in
the first half of the 1st c. A.D. Local workshops produced a curious pottery that
recalls terra sigillata in its shapes and thin-walled pottery in its fine clay
and its roulette decoration. A lamp mold signed by the African potter Lucius Munatius
Treptus indicates either that he had a branch here or that he sold the mold to
a local potter.
The Roman city was much larger than the area enclosed by the 14th
c. walls, and the two cities only partially coincide. Outside the mediaeval fortifications,
in the parish of Maximinos, there is an area suggestively called cividade, covered
until recently with yards. Remains of the Roman town wall and an amphitheater
were still visible there in the 18th c., but the area has not been systematically
excavated. Remains of the Roman town wall were also visible in the Avelar farm
E of S. Geraldo Street. This wall was probably late, built to enclose an extension
of the town.
Inscriptions attest the existence of monumental buildings of which
no traces remain today: a temple of the imperial cult, perhaps a temple of Isis,
and a market (Flavius Urbitius dedicated an altar to the genius of the place).
In the cloister of the Seminary of Santiago were found remains of a structure
(bath?) with a pool covered with mosaics of sea life and another pool with mosaics
was excavated in the garden next to the Largo de S. Paulo. The Fonte do Idolo
on Raio street is a curious sanctuary dedicated to Tongoenabiagus: a fountain
gushes out of a rocky wall fashioned by the pick, and a niche in the wall holds
a bust (of the god?) and a full-length figure wearing a toga (the donor?). Inscriptions
name the donor of the sanctuary as Celicus Fronto, a native of Arcobriga. The
fountain was certainly outside the fortifications, not far from one of the cemeteries.
In fact, some burials have been found on Raio street, and on the E side of the
avenue of Marechal Gomes da Costa.
There was another cemetery to the N near the presentday Alferes Alfredo
Ferreira street, and a third to the SW in the area of S. Pedro de Maximinos. At
the site of the Hospital de S. Marcos there was perhaps a city gate. Falcoes street
(now Hospital street) probably corresponds to the decumanus. Santa Maria street
from the cathedral to the Santiago gate, in which was found a statuette of Minerva,
may be the cardo.
J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
CAETOBRIGA (Ancient city) SETUBAL
Troia ("Caetobriga") Alentejo, Portugal.
The site of a large Roman town on the Troia peninsula on the left bank of the
Sado river. It was settled at least by the 1st c. A.D. Ptolemy (2.5) mentions
a city of Caetobrix S of Tejo, and the Antonine Itinerary cites a Catobriga in
the same region. Some house facades, well aligned, were visible on the surface
during the 19th c. in a region of Troia known as Rua da Princesa. At least two
of these houses had two stories, and there were mosaics on the floors of the upper
rooms facing on the main road. In one of the houses was found a hoard of bronze
coins of the late Empire. A bath was also excavated; tanks for preparing garum
were found along the river; and at the end of the 19th c. an Early Christian church
was discovered and a round structure, perhaps a baptistery. One of the cemeteries
of the city, Aldeira, contained over a hundred graves with rich grave goods.
The finds are in the National Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon.
There is some speculation that the site of Caetobriga lies in Setubal,
32 km SE of Lisbon. The name seems to derive from Caetobriga. In the area occupied
by the modern city the S. Sebastiao hill could correspond to ancient Caetobriga.
The Roman finds in Setubal, although numerous, do not prove, however, that there
was anything more than a small village there, like the many others that existed
on the right bank of the mouth of the Sado.
J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
COIMBRA (Town) COIMBRA
Aeminium (Coimbra) Beira Litoral, Portugal.
Mentioned by Pliny (HN 4.24) and Ptolemy (2.5) and in the Antonine Itinerary,
the name also occurs in an inscription dedicated to Constantius Chlorus. Conimbriga,
16 km to the S, was in the 6th c. the seat of a bishopric in which Aeminium was
a parish, but ca. 589 the Bishop Posidonius was transferred from Conimbriga to
Aeminium, and part of Conimbriga's population also took refuge there. In the 9th
c. Aeminium took the name of Colimbria, a corruption of Conimbriga.
Nothing remains of the Roman monuments of Aeminium except the cryptoporticus
under the Museu Machado de Castro. Two arches still standing in the 18th c. in
Estrela (next to the present-day government building) were once thought to be
remains of a Roman triumphal arch, but they may have been ruins of one of the
fortification gates of the 9th c. There were, however, some Roman baths, called
in the 12th c. the Baths of the King, in the area where the monastery of Santa
Cruz was built. The aqueduct now called Arcos do Jardim seems to have been built
in the 16th c. over the ruins of the Roman aqueduct. The Roman road coming from
Conimbriga crossed the river E of the present bridge and probably ran alongside
the aqueduct. Near the aqueduct was the cemetery. On the Largo da Se Velha, remains
of a Roman building were uncovered, and coins and ceramics were found. Traces
of the Roman period in Coimbra are scarce, but the crytoporticus under the Museu
Machado de Castro is one of the chief remaining Roman structures of Portugal.
The hillside between the present-day terraces of the cathedrals (Se
Velha and Se Nova) was the site of the cryptoporticus on which the Romans constructed
their forum, a huge artificial platform on two levels. On the upper level, a pi-shaped
gallery surrounds another of the same plan. In each arm of the pi three corridors
give access from one gallery to the other, and they are also connected at the
top. Between the arms of the pi are chambers connected by narrow vaulted passageways.
On the lower level were other rooms, higher and more spacious, arranged along
a gallery with narrow passageways connecting them. This level was partially destroyed
by houses built against it, and later, perhaps when the bishop's palace was reconstructed
in the 16th c., the galleries were filled in with rubble. In the debris were uncovered
four marble heads, representing a priestess, Agrippina, Vespasian, and Trajan.
In the excavations on the site of the present-day church of S. Joao de Almedina
pieces of entablature have been found which can perhaps be attributed to the temple
in the forum. The chronology of the complex has not been established, but the
suggested dates in the 3d-5th c. are certainly too late.
Among the native sons of Aeminium was the architect Gaius Servius
Lupus, builder of the lighthouse of La Coruna in NE Spain.
J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
CONIMBRIGA (Ancient city) PORTUGAL
Conimbriga (Condeixa-a-Velha) Beira Litoral, Portugal.
About 16 km S of Coimbra, near the village of Condeixa-a-Velha. The name means
oppidum of the Conii, a tribe which inhabited the region before the arrival of
the Celtic tribe of Saefes some time between the end of the 7th c. and the 5th
c. B.C. Conimbriga was probably entered by Decimus lunius Brutus at the end of
the 2d c. B.C. Not far away is an encampment, which was perhaps built by Brutus,
today almost destroyed by the airfield of Cernache.
Objects from the Roman Republican era at Conimbriga are rare. The
first forum is from the Augustan period; next to it simple rectangular houses
of Iron Age tradition survived to Flavian times. Pliny (HN 4.21) classifies Conimbriga
among the oppida of Lusitania, and under the Flavians the city received the status
of municipium and the name of Flavia Conimbriga. In the same period, the forum
was replaced by another, different in plan and of larger proportions. Considerable
construction took place in the first half of the 3d c. A.D. and there was a notable
workshop of mosaic workers. At the end of the same century or the beginning of
the 4th, the city was fortified; the amphitheater, a public bath building, and
some of the richest houses were left outside; the baths and houses were razed.
The latest Roman coins found in Conimbriga date from 402 to 408 and are very rare.
Rome probably abandoned the region in the time of Honorius. The Cantabri, perhaps
the richest family in the city, probably took over its government and defense,
but in 465 they became prisoners of the Suevi. In 468, according to Idatius of
Chaves, the Suevi attacked Conimbriga a second time and partially destroyed it.
The city, however, was not abandoned. By 561 it was a seat of a bishop;
its own prelate Lucentius participated in the first council of Bracara, but the
seat was soon moved to Aeminium. Many Visigoth coins have been found (one of Rodrigo
minted in 710, the year before the Arab invasion and the downfall of the Visigoth
monarchy), as well as Arab and mediaeval coins. Occupation of the site may have
continued even after the Arab invasion of 711, but the absence of stones with
Arab workmanship and of Moslem pottery indicates that it was no more than a hamlet.
Near the E section of the fortifications several buildings have been
excavated: a rich residence with private baths, three other less extensive but
luxurious houses, two public baths, an Early Christian church, and a building
which served perhaps as an inn. More recently the Forum of Augustus has been discovered,
the Flavian forum which replaced it, two insulae of houses and commercial buildings,
and some large public baths of Trajan's time, constructed over others of the early
1st c.
The rich houses are all built around a large peristyle with a pool:
in one of them the pool held more than 400 water jets. Around the peristyle was
a portico paved with mosaics. Two of the larger houses have as a second central
point a small atrium which opened on the sleeping quarters of the house. The mosaics
discovered constitute the largest collection in Portugal, although there are others,
at Torre de Palma, for example, more varied in theme and more carefully executed.
The mosaics with mythological themes represent Perseus, Bellerophon, Acteon, the
Minotaur in the labyrinth, and a solar chariot. Others show hunting scenes or
animal life, from aquatic birds to sea dragons, the elephant, or the camel. The
simplification of some of the Classical themes by leaving out some of the usual
figures (Andromeda is omitted from the mosaic of Perseus) is characteristic of
the local workshops, which seem to have been particularly active in the time of
the Seven.
Of the public monuments, the oldest remains are those of the Forum
of Augustus. The monument was enclosed on one side by a basilica with three aisles
and on the other by shops. On the N side was the temple, built over a crypt. This
forum was demolished under the Flavians to make room for another (100 x 50 m)
and the public square was enclosed by two monumental porticos along the E and
W sides. On the S side were some small structures, now ruined, which were probably
shops. The large temple with a double cella, dedicated to Rome and Augustus, dominated
an esplanade at a little higher level in the N section of the forum. The esplanade
was surrounded by a pi-shaped cryptoporticus with a flat roof resting on thick
pillars, and above the crytoporticus stood a portico. This forum, which had neither
basilica nor curia, was destroyed at the beginning or middle of the 5th c.
The amphitheater (94 x 80 m) outside the walls has not yet been excavated.
It dates from the 3d c. A.D. The cavea rests in part on arcades and in part is
cut out of the rocky hillside. Four public baths of different periods have so
far been discovered in the city. Two of them, each with a natatio, existed during
the 2d and 3d c.; both have curious circular laconica, and in the center a small
pool, also round, with steps hollowed out of the pavement. At a level higher than
the pool, a passageway resting on the hypocaust goes around the room. The water
was brought by an aqueduct, largely underground, from a large spring ca. 3 km
from the city, and was distributed to the baths and some houses in lead pipes.
Water was channeled even into simple houses in which there are no traces of paving
in mosaic, and which could have belonged only to small industries or small traders.
The Early Christian basilica has a cruciform apse, and the baptistery
a circular basin of a depth unusual in the 7th-8th c., the period to which the building is attributed. The finds are in a museum at the site.
R. Etienne & J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains 60 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
EVORA (Town) EVORA
Ebora (Evora) Alentejo, Portugal.
Mentioned by Ptolemy (2.5), Mela (3.1), Pliny (HN 4.22), and in the Antonine Itinerary.
It was also called Liberalitas Iulia, a name received from Julius Caesar or Octavian
before 27 B.C. The name Ebora is Celtic, but nothing is known of the prehistoric
town. According to one tradition Sertorius established his base of operations
in the peninsula here. From Caesar or Octavian it received the Latium vetus and
from Vespasian the status of municipium.
In the center of the town and on one of its two highest points stands
one of the best-preserved temples in the peninsula, the so-called Temple of Diana.
It is peripteral and hexastyle, and a temple of the imperial cult. The foundations
of opus incertum measure 25 by 15 m and are 3.5 m high. On the N side are preserved
six original granite columns 7.68 m high, with capitals of local marble. The colonnades
of the W and E sides are incomplete, and the facade has disappeared completely.
Some stones with bucrania and paterae, in the museum of the city, perhaps belong
to the frieze.
At Praca do Giraldo there appears to have been a triumphal arch (perhaps
the only one in Portuguese Lusitania), demolished in 1570. The circuit of the
fortifications, erected at the end of the 3d c. A.D., can be entirely reconstructed.
Many sections are still visible, especially on the Largo das Portas de Moura,
the Largo dos Colegiais, and the streets of Menino Jesus and of Alcarcova. This
Roman city had the largest number of families of Roman origin: Julia, Calpurnia,
Canidia, and Catinia. The Julian family at the beginning of the 3d c. had a rich
villa ca. 15 km from the city in a place now called Nossa Senhora da Tourega.
J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains 18 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
FARO (Town) FARO
Ossonoba (Faro) Algarve, Portugal.
The modern city lies over the ancient one which is mentioned by Strabo (3.2.5), Ptolemy (2.5), Pliny (HN 4.22), Mela (3.1), and in the Antonine Itinerary. Roman remains include a temple unearthed in the Largo da Se, tombs in Bairro Letes, and a deposit of some scores of lamps in the Horta do Pinto. Additional evidence of identification comes from inscriptions found mostly in the fortifications. The finds are in the Archaeological Museum of Faro.
IDANHA-A-VELHA (Town) CASTELLO BRANCO
Egitania (Idanha-a-Velha) Beira Baixa, Portugal.
On the banks of the Ponsul, ca. 50 km from Castelo Branco. The Roman town existed
at least from 16 B.C., when it received a sun dial from Quintus lalius Augurinus.
At that time it was governed by four magistrates, all with Celtic names, and was
not yet a Roman municipium. Romanization proceeded up to the time of Claudius,
when Roman citizenship was conferred on Lucius Marcius Avitus, commander of the
ala I Singularium civium Romanorum, stationed here from at least A.D. 41 to no
later than 69. Perhaps the mineral wealth of the region justified the presence
of a military detachment, which was transferred at least by A.D. 69 to Germany.
Egitania became a municipium in the time of the Flavians. Various inscriptions
call the city civitas Igaeditanis, Igaeditanorum, or simply Igaeditania. Almost
all the Visigoth kings from Recaredo (586-601) to Rodrigo (710-711) minted coins
here. The fortifications, preserved in almost their entire circuit, include numerous
inscriptions and worked Roman blocks; they date from the end of the 3d or the
beginning of the 4th c. A.D.
The cardo corresponds to the present-day Castelo and Guimaraes streets;
the decumanus to Rua Nova. The mediaeval tower is located on the podium of a Roman
temple, perhaps the Temple of Venus, known from an inscription of the first half
of the 1st c. A.D. and erected by a certain Modestinus. He may be the Gaius Cantius
Modestinus who built a temple in Midoes to the Genius of the city and another
to Victoria (CIL ii, 401-2). He was probably a citizen of Celtic origin, a wealthy
landowner in the region developed by the road from Emerita to Egitania.
The cathedral, which may lie over a temple to Mars, has three aisles;
it dates from the 6th or 7th c. but has been much altered. In front of its main
door at a lower level which may be that of the original Christian church, was
a baptistery. The rectangular basin had two other basins, much smaller and shallower,
used for infants.
Outside the walls to the W are traces of a Roman bath. A Roman bridge
nearby crosses the Ponsul. The road from Emerita to Egitania, which runs across
the bridge, and its extensions to Asturica and Viseu, seem to have been constructed
in A.D. 5 or 6, when Augustus set the limits of the civitates of the region: those
of the Igaeditani, the Lancienses Oppidani, the Mirobrigenses (Ciudad Rodrigo),
Bletisa and Salmantica. Egitania was thus an important road center. But it was
also in a region where gold was mined, as is attested by an inscription which
Tiberius Claudius Rufus, made a Roman citizen perhaps in the time of Claudius,
dedicated to Jupiter to thank the god for 120 pounds of gold.
The finds are for the most part in the local museum. The 200 or more
inscriptions constitute the largest collection in Portugal, and include the oldest
inscription found in Lusitania: that of Quintus lalius Augurinus already cited.
J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
LIRIA (Town) LEIRIA
Leiria or Lauro (Liria) Valencia, Spain.
City of Tarraconensis 25 km NW of Valencia, at the foot of the Cerro de S. Miguel
and site of an important Iberian settlement, the successor to Iberian Edeta, capital
of Edetania. It was besieged and burnt by Sertorius in 78 B.C. and, according
to tradition, its inhabitants were transported to Collipo in Portugal, whence
the latter took the name of Leiria.
More probably the Sertorians founded a new settlement, at first of
little importance, in the area today known as the Pla de l'Arc from the still
visible remains of a Roman arch. CIL II, 3786, an inscription discovered in the
district of S. Vicente, reveals that Q. Sertorius Sertorianus and his wife Sertoria
dedicated a temple to the Nymphs in honor of the Edetani, and Ptolemy (2.6.63)
identifies Edeta with Leiria. The new town enjoyed the Latin right (Plin. HN 3.23).
Greater difficulty attaches to the identification of Edeta with the Lauro mentioned
by Frontinus (2.5.31), Appian (1.109), Plutarch (Sert. 18 and Pomp. 18), and Orosius
(5.23.6), in connection with the Sertorian war. Perhaps these writers, who wrote
long after the disappearance of the native town, confused Lauro with the Edeta
which Sertorius burned. There are other towns named Lauro, one in Baetica and
another N of the Ebro, which issued native coinage.
Roman finds in the area of Liria are plentiful, particularly in the
Pla de l'Arc, and 65 inscriptions, whole or fragmentary, from Liria or elsewhere,
refer to the town (CIL II, 3786-3818, 3874-75, 3989, 4251, 6012-17). Some of the
inscriptions in the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia, the C'an Porcar in Liria;
4251, cited as in Tarragona, is missing, but a copy is preserved in the Casa Pilatos
in Seville. A hoard of 992 republican and imperial Roman coins is now in the University
Library in Valencia. Among ceramics there is abundant thin-walled ware, Arretine
terra sigillata, S Gallic, and Hispanic; amphorae and lamps; there are also a
marble oscillum with a tragic mask on one face and a captive hare on the other
(Prehistoric Museum, Valencia); architectural remains: capitals, shafts, the arch
mentioned above with a column 3 m high; mosaics. One mosaic, in the National Archaeological
Museum in Madrid (5.4 x 4.6 m), depicts the Labors of Hercules and dates from
the end of the 2d c. A.D. or beginning of the 3d. Recent excavation has uncovered
terraces, houses, stairways, streets, and water conduits.
Study of the finds invalidates the theory that the city was founded
in the plain by the Sertorians after their capture and burning of the town on
the hill, for on the lower site no Campanian ware B has been discovered and the
earliest ceramic material is from Augustan times. This leaves a gap of some 50
years. Perhaps this indicates merely that the original foundation was small and
unimportant, although there is abundant material from the 1st c., less from the
2d, a marked falling off in the 3d, and practically nothing datable to the 4th
and 5th c. The city did not disappear, although it became smaller and impoverished
during the revolts in the latter half of the 3d c.
D. Fletcher, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
LISBON (Town) LISBOA
Olisipo (Lisbon) Estremadura, Portugal.
Mentioned by Ptolemy (2.5), Strabo (3.3.1), Mela (3.1), and Pliny (HN 4.22). Isidore
of Seville and the Ravenna Cosmographer call the city Ulyssipona and Olisipona
respectively, from which the name Lisbon is derived. A settlement existed here
in the Late Palaeolithic Age. Of the topography and history of the Roman city
little is known. The site was occupied by the Romans in 138 B.C. The tradition
according to which Cato the Censor was in Olisipo in 195 B.C. rests on an inscription
now considered unreliable. According to Strabo, in 138 B.C. the consul Decimus
Junius Brutus fortified the city, but it is not clear whether he encircled the
existing village with fortifications or simply built a permanent castrum beside
it. Pliny calls Olisipo Felicitas Julia and is uncertain whether it received this
designation from Julius Caesar or Octavian. Also uncertain is the date when Olisipo
was granted the status of municipium, mentioned by Pliny and confirmed by inscriptions.
No traces of the network of streets or the circuit of fortifications
has been found, but it is likely that Olisipo, like Ebora, Pax Iulia, Egitania,
Conimbriga, and other cities of Lusitania, was fortified at least by the end of
the 3d or the beginning of the 4th c. The Roman city occupied the S and W slopes
of the mountain where the Castelo de S. Jorge was later erected. On the S it certainly
extended to the Tejo, and on the W at least to the present-day Rua da Prata, where
there were some baths and a temple. The only remains of Roman public buildings
are those of a theater and of the baths of the Augustales. The theater lies between
Saudade and S. Mamede (Caldas) streets and was built in the time of Nero. Gaius
Heius Primus, flamen augustalis, erected the proscenium and orchestra at his own
expense. To judge from the representation of Lisbon on the royal pendent seal
of 1352, the theater was then still well preserved, but it had disappeared by
the time of Renaissance descriptions of Lisbon. In 1798 the proscenium, orchestra,
and first seats of the cavea were discovered and a plan was published in 1815.
Building again covered the site until recently, and the remains have not yet been
completely excavated.
The baths under the Rua da Prata were built in the time of Tiberius,
but no traces have been found of the other bath, reconstructed in A.D. 336, on
the Rua das Pedras Negras.
Olisipo was supplied with water by an aqueduct about 10 km long which
ran from below a dam, the dike of which is preserved. The dike is 50 m long and
7 m thick and is reinforced; part of it still stands 8 m high. The 3d c. A.D.
date for its construction is uncertain.
J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
MERTOLA (Town) SETUBAL
Myrtilis (Mertola) Alentejo, Portugal.
Mentioned by Pliny (HN 4.22), Mela (3.1), Ptolemy (2.5), and referred to in the Antonine Itinerary. Myrtilis was the port of embarcation on the Guadiana for the copper mined in the neighboring mines of S. Domingo. Good examples of sculpture are preserved from the period of Roman domination. Six huge columns on the bank of the river have been thought the remains of a Roman bridge, but they are more likely the remains of an aqueduct of the Muslim period.
SANTIAGO DO CACEM (Town) PORTUGAL
Mirobriga (Santiago do Cacem) Alentejo, Portugal
About 138 km SE of Lisbon. Mentioned by Pliny (HN 4.22), who refers to them as
"mirobricenses qui Celtici cognominantur", by Ptolemy (11.5), and in
the Antonine Itinerary.
On the acropolis is a sanctuary with a temple, possibly of Aesclepius,
that dominates a paved open square. The buildings N and S of it are not completely
excavated so that their purpose is still unknown. Access to the square is by two
paved ways on the SW side, on one of which stands another temple with an apsidal
end, possible dedicated to Venus. Two inscriptions to Venus and the remains of
a statue of the goddess support the attribution of this second temple to her,
but unfortunately the exact finding place of inscriptions and statue is unknown.
Another inscription refers to festivals in honor of Aesclepius, and a fourth,
found on the acropolis, mentions Mars. Well-paved streets, bordered by shops lead
down from the sanctuary to some baths at the bottom of the hill. The baths are
small but fairly well preserved; beside them is a small Roman bridge.
About 1 km farther along the road is the circus (360 x 74 m), the
only one preserved in Portugal. No residential areas have yet been discovered,
and no forum, basilica, or curia. Thus the question arises whether Mirobriga was
a city or simply a rural sanctuary, although the reference in the inscription
of Aesclepius to a splendidissima ordo and its classification as an oppidum by
Pliny argue in favor of a city. Some of the finds are in an unused chapel near
the ruins and some in the Municipal Museum of Santiago do Cacem.
J. Alarcao, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains 21 image(s), bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
PORTUGAL (Country) IBERIAN PENINSULA
CONIMBRIGA (Ancient city) PORTUGAL
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