Aquileia

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Aquileia was an ancient town in northeastern Italy, located near the head of the Adriatic Sea. Founded in 181 BC as a Roman military colony, it was originally established to secure the eastern borders of Italy against neighboring tribes such as the Carni and Histri. The city subsequently grew into an important frontier military city. Its strategic location made it an hub for trade and military operations, particularly for Roman expansion toward the Danube. In classical antiquity, Aquileia was a major Roman city with an estimated population close to 100,000 in the 2nd century AD. Aquileia was one of the first cities in which Christianity could be practised unhindered; the Patriarch of Aquileia was the second most important person of the Western Church after the bishop of Rome. In the 4th century, the construction of the Patriarchal Basilica under Bishop Theodore marked the city as an important religious center. However, the city's decline began after being sacked by Attila the Hun in 452 AD. Aquileia remained a religious center, though its military significance waned. Over time, the patriarchal seat moved to Cividale del Friuli for greater security. In the 8th century, Aquileia's significance...

In 452 AD, it was destroyed by the hordes of Attila 's Huns.

Aquileia, which is closest to the gulf of the Adriatic Sea was founded by the Romans, fortified against the barbarians from the interior. One goes up with ships to the city by ascending along the course of the Natiso for about 60 stadia. it served as an emporium to those Illyrian peoples living along the Istro. They come to be supplied with products from the sea, such as wine, which they put into wooden barrels by loading it onto wagons, and also oil, while the people of the area come to buy slaves, cattle and leather. Aquileia lies across the border from the Veneti. The border is marked by a river that flows down from the Alps and through which, with a navigation of 1,200 stadia, one goes up to the city of Noreia.

This is how Herodian describes it at the time of his 238 siege by the troops of Maximinus Thrax :

- Before these events occurred, Aquileia was a very large city with a very large stable population. Located on the sea, it had all the Illyrian provinces behind it. Aquileia was used as a port of entry to Italy. The city had, thus, made it possible for goods to be transported from the interior by land or rivers, to be exchanged with merchant ships. [Goods] were, in addition, transported from the sea to the mainland as needed, when goods were not produced locally, due to the cold climate, but sent up to the mountainous areas. Since agriculture in the hinterland had many people employed in wine production, they exported large quantities of wine to markets that could not grow vines there. The large number of people living permanently in Aquileia consisted not only of native residents, but also of foreigners and traders. At this time the city was even more crowded than usual. All the people from the surrounding area had left the small towns or villages and fled [to the big city]. They placed their hopes of safety in the large city and its defensive walls. These ancient walls, however, had mostly collapsed. Under Roman rule the cities of Italy did not, normally, need walls or weapons. They had substituted lasting peace for war and had also earned the right to participate in Roman rule.

Aquileia was founded in 181 B.C. near the Natissa River as a colony under Latin law, by Lucius Manlius Acidinus, Publius Scipio Nasica and Gaius Flaminius, sent by the senate to bar the way to the neighboring Carni and Histrian peoples who threatened the eastern borders of Italy. It was established in the territory of the Carni:

In the same year 181 BC the colony of Aquileia was deducted in the territory of the Gauls. 3 000 infantrymen received 50 iugera each, the centurions 100, the horsemen 140. The triumvirs who founded the colony were Publius Scipio Nasica, Gaius Flaminius, and Lucius Manlius Acidinus.

The first settlers were 3,000 veterans, followed by their respective families from Samnium, a total of about 20,000 people, who were followed by groups of Veneti ; later, in 169 B.C., another 1,500 families were added, while eastern communities, such as Egyptians, Jews and Syrians, also settled in the city.

It was ruled initially by duumvirs and later by quattuorviri with its own senate. The city first grew as a military outpost in preparation for future campaigns against Histri and Carni, later as "headquarters" for eventual Roman expansion toward the Danube.

Aquileia formed the main base of the military operations in Illyricum of the consuls Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Lupus, Gaius Marcius Figulus, and Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum, during the years 156-155 BC, against the Dalmatian tribes, which then led to the conquest of the city of Delminium. In 129 B.C. consul Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus attacked the Histrian peoples of Iapodes and Liburni from northern Italy (from his "headquarters" in Aquileia, as reflected in a eulogy dedicated to him), and later also defeated the Alpine peoples of the Carni and Taurisci (from the area of Nauportus ), earning for these successes the Triumph. Ten years later, in 119 BC. Lucius Caecilius Metellus completed a new victorious campaign against the Dalmatians, using Aquileia as the base of his operations, celebrating his triumph the following year and earning himself the victorious title of Delmaticus. Four years later, in 115 BC, the consul Marcus Aemilius Scaurus operated in Cisalpine Gaul against both the Ligurians in the west and the Carni and Taurisci in the east, using Aquileia, in the latter case, as his "headquarters." Still two years later, in 113 B.C., the consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo was sent to confront an invasion of Germanic - Celtic peoples (including the Cimbri ), who had penetrated Illyricum and then Noricum. Carbo, at the head of an army that had Aquileia as its headquarters, was however defeated near Noreia.

From its origin as a military base derives the four-sided shape of the garrison, divided by the cardo maximus, today's Via Julia Augusta, and the decumanus maximus. Once the region had been pacified and Romanized, the city, a municipium after 89 B.C. as a result of the lex Iulia de civitate (which conferred the fullness of Roman law, assigning it to the Velina tribe ), grew larger in successive stages, as attested by the various city walls. It became a political-administrative center (capital of the Tenth Augustan Region, Venetia et Histria ) and a prosperous emporium, benefiting from the long port system and the radius of important roads that ran from it both northward, beyond the Alps and as far as the Baltic Sea (" amber road "), and latitudinally, from Gaul to the East. From late Republican times and throughout most of the Imperial era Aquileia constituted one of the great nerve centers of the Roman Empire. Notable was its artistic life, sustained by the wealth of patrons and the intensity of trade and contacts. Its location made the city a crossroads of trade in glass, iron and amber; a wine named Pucinum was also produced.

It was precisely during this period that Aquileia gained increasing strategic-military importance. It was to serve as an advanced post protecting northern Italy against possible invasions from the north and east, as happened:

- at the time of the Cimbrian Wars in 102 BCE;

- when Mithridates VI of Pontus planned an invasion of the peninsula through an alliance with Gauls and Scythians. He hoped that many of the Italic peoples would ally with him in hatred of the Romans, as had happened during the Second Punic War to Hannibal, after the Romans had waged war against him in Spain. He knew, moreover, that almost all of Italy had rebelled against the Romans on two occasions in the last thirty years: at the time of the social war of 90-88 B.C. and in the gladiator Spartacus ' servile war of 73-71 B.C..

- for the formation of the powerful kingdom of the Dacian tribes by their king Burebista.

During his first consulship in 59 B.C., Gaius Julius Caesar, with the support of the other triumvirs ( Pompey and Crassus ), obtained by the Lex Vatinia of March 1 the proconsulate of the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum for five years and the command of an army consisting of three legions. Shortly afterwards a senatus consultum also added that of Gallia Narbonensis, whose proconsul had died suddenly, and the command of the 10th legion.

The fact that Caesar was initially assigned the province of Illyricum as part of his imperium, and that by early 58 BCE as many as three legions had been stationed in Aquileia, may indicate that he intended to seek glory and riches in this very area with which to increase his military and political power and influence. Caesar needed major military victories so that he could build up his own personal power with which to counterbalance that which Pompey had built up through his victories in the East. To this end he probably planned a campaign beyond the Carnic Alps all the way to the Danube, taking advantage of the growing threat from the tribes of Dacia (roughly corresponding to present-day Romania ), which had united under the leadership of Burebista, who had then led his people to conquer the territories located west of the Tisza River, crossing the Danube and subduing the entire area over which the present Hungarian plain stretches, but above all coming dangerously close to Roman Illyricum and Italy. However, his armies had come to a sudden halt, perhaps out of fear of a possible direct intervention by Rome in the Balkan - Carpathian area. Thus, instead of continuing on his march westward, Burebista had returned to his bases in Transylvania, then turned his sights eastward: he attacked the Bastarnae and finally besieged and destroyed the ancient Greek colony of Olbia (near present-day Odessa ).

Caesar visited Aquileia several times during the conquest of Gaul : in the winter of 57-56 BC, in connection with military/diplomatic operations conducted by the proconsul himself in the vicinity of Salona around March 3 of that year; in 54 BC to conduct a brief campaign against the Pyrasti people who inhabited southern Illyricum; again in the winters of 54-53 BC. B.C. and 53-52 B.C.; Caesar returned with the legio XV during the following winter, after the city had been attacked along with Tergeste by the Iapydes, when the proconsul was engaged in Gaul against Vercingetorix. The consequence was that the inhabitants of Aquileia were not only forced to repair the damaged walls, but began the construction of two defensive castella : at Tricesimo (50 km north of Aquileia) and at Iulium Carnicum.

In 49 BC, at the outbreak of civil war, Aulus Gabinius was recalled by Caesar and given command of operations in Illyricum. He had three new legions at Aquileia (XXXIII, XXXIV, and XXXV, amounting to 30 total cohorts) and at the head of 15 cohorts and 3,000 cavalry, marching south toward Macedonia, he suffered a sudden attack by the Dalmatians, managing to shelter at Salona with only a few survivors. Eventually he was able to join Lucius Cornificius (who had Legions XXXI and XXXII under his employ) with the few remaining soldiers to fight against these peoples.

Fifteen years later, between 35 and 33 BCE, Aquileia still remained "headquarters" of Octavian's military campaigns in Illyricum. It was at the center of three different routes: the one furthest to the southeast toward the coastal tribes; the "central" one leading into the territories of the Iapydes ; and the one furthest to the northeast against the Carni and Taurisci populations.