Everything about Italica totally explained
» This article is about the city in Spain.:
Italica is also the name of the cultivar group of the species Brassica oleracea, commonly known as Broccoli.
Italica may also refer to an Italian oceanographic and freight ship.
The city of
Italica (Spanish:
Itálica; north of modern day
Santiponce, 9 km NW of
Seville, Spain) was founded in 206 BC by the Roman general
Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus in order to settle Roman soldiers wounded in the
Battle of Ilipa, where the Carthaginian army was defeated during the
Second Punic War. The name Italica bound the colonia to their Italian origins.
Italica was the birthplace of Roman emperor
Trajan.
Hadrian was generous to his settled town, which he made a
colonia; he added temples, including a
Trajaneum venerating Trajan, and rebuilt public buildings. Italica’s amphitheater seated 25,000 spectators—half as many as the
Flavian Amphitheatre in Rome— and was the third largest in the Roman Empire. The city's Roman population at the time is estimated to have been only 8000. The games and theatrical performances funded by the local aristocracy, who filled the positions of magistrate, were a means of establishing status: the size of the amphitheater shows that the local elite was maintaining status that extended far beyond Italica itself.
The modern town of Santiponce overlies the "old city" of Republican times founded by Scipio and the pre-Roman Iberian city. The well-preserved city of ruins seen today is the
nova urbs magnificently laid out under Hadrian's patronage.
A shift of the
Guadalquivir River bed, probably due to
siltation— a widespread problem in
antiquity that followed
removal of the forest cover—left Italica isolated, high and dry. The city started to dwindle as early as the 3rd century. Later
Seville grew nearby, and no modern city covered most of Italica's foundations. The result is an unusually well-preserved Roman city of
Hispania Baetica, and unexpected riches in the
Museo Arqueologico of Seville, with its famous marble colossus of Trajan. In Italica, cobbled Roman streets are visible, and mosaic floors still
in situ. The excavation of Italica began in 1781 and continues.
Image:Italica anfiteatro 01.jpg|Italica's amphitheatre pit
Image:DSC05445.JPG|Pits were filled with water for the naumachia
Image:italicatest.jpg|A Roman road in Italica
Image:italicahall.jpg|A hallway that circles the ampitheatre
Image:italicabirds.jpg|Mosaic floor in the House of the Birds
Image:italicaneptune2.jpg|Mosaic floor in the House of the Planetarium
Further Information
Get more info on 'Italica'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://italica.totallyexplained.com">Italica Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
