A NEW IMPRESSION OF THE ROMAN CITY OF SAGUNTUM (SPAIN) BASED ON RECENT FINDINGS

Abstract

Saguntum’s urban development under the High Empire was influenced by geographical
features that marked the city’s limits: the topography of the Castillo (the southern
slope of the final spurs of the Sierra Calderona range) and the course of the river Palancia
to the north (Figs. 1, 2). The city sprawls over several hillsides from the river up to the
stage of the theatre, the forum plaza, and the area west of the summit of the Castillo.
Sagunto lies at the mouth of the Palancia and with in the corridor that forms the Via
Augusta, which also begins at the mouth of the Palancia and then follows the course of
the river towards Teruel and the interior of the peninsula. The city was an obligatory stop
between the north and south of the peninsula and a strategic point for land and maritime
communications (Fig. 2). The growth of the city under the High Empire would have been
impossible without the business conducted at its port in the area known as Grau Vell1.
Saguntum played a vital rôle in a Mediterranean market that included the most important
cities along the Spanish and other coasts (the large islands, Gaul, North Africa and Italy).
The Second Punic War precipitated the beginnings of urban changes. Following the
damage caused by the war against Carthage, reconstruction of the Iberian oppidum of Arse
– with the assistance of Rome – led to an expansion of the city’s limits. The Roman civitas
was established where the Iberian people had previously built, in an area that included the
current location of the castle parade ground. On the hill containing the fortress, a temple
based on a tripartite plan was built, to which a cistern and the wall that includes the
tower of the Plaza de los Estudiantes are linked. Urban development during the Republican
period was focused on the construction of this temple through the establishment of a
series of terraces, which levelled the uneven ground and upon which public buildings
were erected2. The scattered remains of these public buildings can be found in the lower building foundations and Iberian pottery, it is necessary to reconsider the importance of this sector, constructed in the 2nd c. B.C. The extension of the urban perimeter has also

been linked to the installation of new approach roads to the city, roads that run mostly N-S
and would be further developed under the High Empire. Monuments were erected in a
centre that was to become the main administrative Seat of the new territory, part of a
monumentalizing trend consistent with what was happening in other Hispanic towns after
the pacification that followed the Sertorian and Civil Wars. Colonisation under Caesar
and Augustus accompanied a change in the administrative status of many of these cities.
During this period, Arse changed its legal status, having been a civitas foederata at least
until 56 B.C., as Cicero3 informs us. Shortly after this, and continuing for the next two
to four decades, inscriptions such as colonia Saguntum, with mention of the aediles who
governed the colony4, appear on the coinage.