Listed 1 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "MALAGA Town ANDALUCIA".
Malaca (Malaga) Malaga, Spain.
Roman city of Baetica on the S coast founded by the Carthaginians, perhaps in
the early 5th c. B.C. The classical authors call the inhabitants of the area Libyphoenicians
(probably the Carthaginian colonists). The Roman name preserves the Punic Malaka,
which meant trading post or commercial settlement. The first documentation of
the city comes from its minting of Carthaginian coins, the earliest of which date
from 200 B.C. The first literary reference is in Strabo (3.4.2), who states that
its plan is of the Phoenician (Carthaginian) type and that it had an important
salt, meat and fish industry. Mela (2.6.94) describes it as an unimportant city,
and Pliny (HN 3.8) states that it was federated with Rome. However, the principal
written document, the Lex Malacitana, is a bronze tablet, discovered in 1851 near
the city, containing chapters 51-69 of the city's law after it was made a Latin
municipium by Vespasian (Municipium Flavium Malacitanum). It is written on five
columns dating from 81-84, and is in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid.
A bishop of Mlilaga first appears in the Council of Elvira.
The theater has features similar to those of the Merida and Djemilla
theaters. It is well preserved but has not been completely excavated. The Augustan
character of the inscriptions found date it from this period. The theater must
have been abandoned in the 3d c. since it was covered with a dump, rich in small
finds, of the 3d-4th c. The upper part of the stage was not covered, and its material
was reused by the Arabs in the Alcazaba. Many finds have come from the slopes
of this fortress: the oldest is a bronze handle of a Greek oinochoi showing an
ephebos leaning on a palm tree and two sirens carrying on their shoulders a creature
with a bull's head. It dates from the beginning of the 5th c. B.C. and is probably
the work of a Peloponnesian studio.
From the theater have come two statues of Attis, and a large silver
patera. From the vicinity of the city comes a bust of Antoninus Pius. All these
finds are in the Archaeological Museum of Malaga, which also houses the collection
of the Marqueses de Casa-Loring, much of which probably come from Malaga.
R. Teja, 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.
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