Listed 3 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "MERIDA Town BADAJOZ" .
ALANGE (Town) BADAJOZ
Alange (Castrum Colubri) Badajoz, Spain.
Roman town 15 km SE of Merida, built over a pre-Roman settlement and now covered by the mediaeval castle. Traditionally it was Castrum Colubri, but this name appears in none of the sources of the Roman period. The baths, the basic structure of which is still recognizable despite later restorations, are still in use. They consist of a rectangular enclosure (28 x 13 m) inside which are two round rooms with separate entrances. Each room, 11.3 m in diameter, is flanked by four exedras and has a round pool in the center.
MEDELLIN (Town) BADAJOZ
Metellinum (Medellin) Badajoz, Spain.
Town on the S bank of the Guadiana, ca. 43 km E of Merida. The date of its foundation
as a colony is not known, but its name is derived from that of Q. Caecilius Metellus,
who was consul in 80-79 B.C. It was administratively part of the province of Lusitania
and is mentioned by Pliny (4.117), Ptolemy (2.5.6), in the Antonine Itinerary
(416.2), and by the Cosmographer of Ravenna (315.8). The road from Augusta Emerita
ran through Metellinum, crossing a bridge of which parts still survive, although
it is not certain that these pillars date from the Roman period.
Some sections of the defensive wall have been identified, and some
stretches of the foundations of the mediaeval wall are probably of Roman origin.
A small theater on the side of the hill crowned by the mediaeval castle is being
excavated. The top of the cavea has been seriously damaged, but its total diameter
appears to be ca. 60 m. A number of Roman inscriptions have been unearthed (CIL
ii, 605ff). Excavations, not yet published, have identified pre-Roman native settlements
yielding Greek pottery.
L.G. Iglesias, 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.
MERIDA (Town) BADAJOZ
Augusta Emerita (Merida) Badajoz, Spain.
Town at the confluence of the Guadiana (the Anas of the Romans) and the Albarregas.
It was founded by P. Carisius, the legate of Augustus, in 25 B.C. for the veterans
discharged after the Cantabrian wars. It came to outrank all other towns of Lusitania
and was one of the most important Roman settlements of the Iberian peninsula:
chief town of the Conventus Iuridicus, according to Pliny (4.117) and a colony
attested by Pliny, by the coins minted there, and by numerous inscriptions. Augustan
boundary stones show the extensive territory of the colony--they have been found
100 km from the town--and Frontinus (De controversiis agrorum 2.52, Lachmann)
says that even after several land distributions there was still land left over.
The original colonists were apparently veterans of the Legiones V Alauda and X
Gemina but the sources, in addition to Frontinus, allude to later settlers of
more obscure origin: the families sent there by Otto in A.D. 69 for example (Tac.,
Hist. 1.78). Inscriptions refer to colonists from the legiones VI Victrix and
VII Gemina. Emerita was also important during the age of the Visigoths and has
been inhabited without a break ever since.
The rectangular plan typical of Roman camps is still reflected in
the modern town. The decumanus maximus survives almost unchanged from the head
of the Roman bridge over the Guadiana to the site of the so-called town gate;
the cardo maximus ran from Trajan's arch to the problematic Arch of Cimbron (no
longer extant). Probably there was originally a walled enclosure framing this
central quadrilateral. There are no visible remains of this enclosure, only references
to the sites of the gates; but Trajan's arch, which some think is a monumental
gateway in the wall, and the stretch of wall recently unearthed during excavation
of the Moorish citadel may be remains of it. This wall runs SW-NE, parallel to
the river. There are also stretches of a larger circuit wall, obviously of a much
later date and including the theater and amphitheater. Although it has not been
dated accurately, it is interesting to note that the wall stopped up one of the
gates of the amphitheater and affected part of the walls of the so-called House
of the Amphitheater. These facts indicate a later date: not only is the house
essentially a 2d c. construction, but the wall is typical of defensive works hastily
thrown up when danger is imminent. It appears to date from the second half of
the 3d c. A.D., the time of the invasions of the Franks and the Alamanni.
The Roman road N to Asturica and S to Italica ran over the bridges,
still extant, across the Albarregas and the Guadiana respectively. The first is
the smaller (130 m long), but retains much of its original Roman design. The larger
bridge (792 x 4.5) over the Guadiana has been rebuilt at various times; the reconstructions
are well documented. At present it has 57 arches of various periods. The best-preserved
Roman part, the structure of which is still intact, is between the town and the
first of the two ramps off the bridge, the one to the island that splits the river.
In this stretch the cut-waters, built of rusticated ashlar masonry like all the
original work, are rounded, and above them between the larger arches are spillways
to reduce the resistance to floodwater. Along the wall of the citadel and near
the ramp to the island there are extensive remains of what must have been wharves;
at that time the Guadiana was navigable up to Merida.
Nothing is known of the forum, which must have been near the modern
Plaza Mayor, at the intersection of the cardo and decumanus, but extensive remains
of two of its temples survive. Near the decumanus some parts of a temple, for
no good reason usually called the temple of Diana, have been incorporated into
a 16th c. house: a few granite columns, several of them still supporting fragments
of the architrave. It was a hexastyle peripteral temple set on a high podium,
with the entrance probably on the N. On its E side are six columns without capitals,
half-covered, in the main facade of the house. On the S side are six more columns,
but parts of the shafts have disappeared. These columns, from one of the smaller
sides of the temple, are so arranged that the central intercolumniation is slightly
wider than the others. The W part, visible from the patio of the house, consists
of five columns with Corinthian capitals, four of which still support the architrave
over three intercolumniations. The columns are 8 m high and their diameter at
the bottom is 0.85 m; the intercolumniations are 2.1 m; the podium, still partly
buried and over 2 m high, is 21.5 m long and 15.6 m wide. It is made of granite
and must have been adorned with stucco or marble.
Fragments of a temple dedicated to Mars have been incorporated into
the so-called Hornita de Santa Eulalia chapel. They consist of two engaged columns
with Corinthian capitals supporting stretches of the entablature profusely decorated
on the frieze with heads of Medusa and palms, and with plants, animals, and military
regalia on the soffits, all from about the middle of the 2d c. Set into the frieze
is a cartouche with the inscription MARTI SACRUM/VETTILLA PACULI. The material
is marble of various hues.
In the SE part of the town was a religious complex where the mystery
cults of Mithras, Serapis, and other exotic gods were celebrated. The finds include
a seated Mercury whose lyre bears an inscription, dated the 180th year after the
foundation of the colony (A.D. 155) and showing C. Accius Hedychrus, the pater
of the Mithras cult known from other inscribed stones from Emerita. Recent excavations
have revealed the remains of Roman houses undoubtedly connected with the Mithraeum,
with patios, cisterns, bathing facilities, and mosaic pavements. The mosaic of
the creation of the universe, one of the most important ever found in the Empire,
can be dated from the end of the 2d c. B.C. Another villa, mentioned above, has
been unearthed near the amphitheater. It consists of several rooms, some with
large mosaics, arranged around a small central peristyle and along a broad corridor.
Painted stucco is preserved at the bottom of the walls. A few private back-to-back
baths seem to be those of a neighboring house not yet excavated. The material
found in the House of the Amphitheater suggests a date between the latter part
of the 1st and the second half of the 3d c., when it was destroyed. Mosaic pavements
in houses have also been found in other parts of the town.
Ruins of the theater and the amphitheater formed a complex E of the
town; the circus is farther off. The theater is outstanding. A large cavea of
concrete and granite ashlar blocks has 13 entrances, 13 vomitoria, and two large
side entrances between the seats of the cavea and the scaena, the lintels of which
bear inscriptions of M. Agrippa dated 16 B.C. Some marble from the scaena has
fallen but most of it is still in place, including statues in the intercolumniations
of the two tiers of colonnades, on a high podium, which constituted the scaena.
Three valvae gave access to a spacious porticoed patio behind. The maximum diameter
of the building is 86.82 m. The structure, perhaps begun by Agrippa, was later
reconstructed.
Across a paved highway 6.5 m wide, the amphitheater consists of a
large ellipse; the N-S diameter is 126.3 m and the E-W one 102.65 m. It has 16
entrances, each of which gave access to a stairway connecting the 32 vomitoria
that open into the cavea. There are two aditus on the longer axis, and four tribunes
placed at the poles of each diameter. Inscriptions, preserved in part, mention
the probable date of construction, 8 B.C., under Augustus. Construction is of
concrete and granite ashlar, and there is a large cruciform pit in the arena similar
to that in the amphitheater at Italica.
About 500 m to the E are the remains of the circus. Its plan is the
usual one, long and narrow, with two almost parallel tiers of seats closed at
one end by a semicircle and at the other by the main facade. The central spina
is slightly out of line with the main axis. The whole building (433 x 114 m) is
in worse condition than the other two public buildings.
The town was supplied with water by an hydraulic system consisting
basically of two capacious reservoirs, the dams of which, restored at various
periods, are still in working order; two main aqueducts, and several secondary
conduits. One of the reservoirs is now called the Proserpina reservoir because
an inscription to Ataecina-Proserpina was found nearby. The dam has a sloping
wall more than 400 m long and 6 m thick. It has been calculated that it can impound
more than S million cu. m of water. Large parts of the aqueduct still survive,
particularly a series of arches, ca. 825 m long, that cross the Albarregas valley
on slender pillars with alternating granite and brick courses. They appear to
date from the second half of the 3d c., although earlier dates have been suggested.
The dam of the so-called Cornalvo reservoir is 220 m long; the wall
has a very steep batter and rows of steps along the part of the dike facing the
water. The Roman structure has been badly disfigured by subsequent restorations
except for the water tower, which is in the reservoir and has well-preserved rusticated
ashlars. Water from this reservoir was carried by several aqueducts, remains of
which can be recognized in the E part of the town. The San Lazaro aqueduct, however,
ca. 1600 m long and not far from the circus, took its water from springs and water
courses in the environs of the town and not from the Cornalvo reservoir. A few
pillars of the arches with alternating granite and brick courses still survive.
Many other Roman remains have been found, some of which have disappeared.
Scattered remains of baths have been recognized, and the cemetery areas identified.
On the San Albin hill, between the Mithraeum and the public buildings, various
types of tombs have been discovered, including columbaria with two burial chambers,
one rectangular and the other trapezoidal, with fresco paintings and funerary
inscriptions. Apparently the town was not extended to the E, and all this area
was for cemeteries. Funerary remains have also been discovered at the two exits
of the Roman road near the two bridges. Recent excavations in the Arab citadel
have uncovered streets and houses of the Roman era. The sewer system is well preserved
and part of it is still in use; its network is complete and provides an accurate
idea of the topography of the ancient town.
Most of the finds are in the Merida Archaeological Museum. The sculpture
collection includes objects found in the theater and the Mithraeum; there are
epigraphic and coin collections, ceramic and glass household ware, and a large
number of domestic utensils and tradesmen's tools. Other material is in the Badajoz
and Sevilla Provincial Museums and the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid.
L.G. Iglesias, 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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