Aguntum
Encyclopedia
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, located ca. 4 km east of Lienz
Lienz
Lienz is a medieval town in the Austrian state of Tyrol. It is the administrative centre of the Lienz district, which covers all of East Tyrol. The municipality also includes the cadastral subdivision of Patriasdorf.-Geography:...
in the Drau valley. The city appears to have been built to exploit the local sources of iron, copper, zinc and gold. During the early Christian era the city was the site of a bishopric.
History
This area of East Tyrol was the homeland of the Laianci tribe and hilltop settlements, so far hardly investigated, crown many of the hills in the area. A trading vicus developed here at an important intersection in the Drau Valley, with one important road leading to the gold deposits in the Hohe Tauern.The oldest Roman remains are a two-roomed wooden structure discovered beneath the bath house and dated to the mid-first century BC. According to Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, the emperor Claudius
Claudius
Claudius , was Roman Emperor from 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he was the son of Drusus and Antonia Minor. He was born at Lugdunum in Gaul and was the first Roman Emperor to be born outside Italy...
granted Aguntum the status of municipium, a status which is attested by inscriptions, including funerary inscriptions, which refer to cultores Genii municipii Agunti. The official name was Municipium Claudium Aguntum. There does not appear to have been a military camp in this area.
Aguntum was a mining and trading centre which exploited local sources of iron, copper, zinc and gold. Craftsmen in the town processed the metals to produce a range of goods which were then transported along the Roman roads. Other exports included wood, milk products (cheese) and mountain crystals from the Tauern range.
The discovery of a layer of ash, as well as the remains of a man and a child in the bath house, points to the sack of Aguntum by the invading barbarians under Radagaisus
Radagaisus
Radagaisus was a Gothic king who led an invasion of Roman Italy in late 405 and the first half of 406. A commited Pagan, Radagaisus evidentily planned to sacrifice the Roman Senators to the gods and burn Rome to the ground. Radagaisus was executed after being defeated by the half-Vandal general...
and Alaric. The city's decline was marked when the bishopric was transferred to nearby Lavant, a few miles to the south. A second sack by Attila and his Huns is attested by a coin dated to AD 452 found in a higher layer of ash. When the Western Roman Empire
Western Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire was the western half of the Roman Empire after its division by Diocletian in 285; the other half of the Roman Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly referred to today as the Byzantine Empire....
collapsed, Aguntum passed under the control of the Ostrogoths and was fought over by Franks
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
, Byzantines
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
and Bavarians. Paul the Deacon write of a major battle fought in 610 between Garibald II of Bavaria
Garibald II of Bavaria
Garibald II was Duke of Bavaria from 610 until his death. He was the son of Tassilo I.He married Geila, daughter of Gisulf II of Friuli and Romilda....
and the Avars
Eurasian Avars
The Eurasian Avars or Ancient Avars were a highly organized nomadic confederacy of mixed origins. They were ruled by a khagan, who was surrounded by a tight-knit entourage of nomad warriors, an organization characteristic of Turko-Mongol groups...
, in which Garibald was completely defeated. Aguntum was destroyed and even Lavant
Lavant
Lavant was a prince-bishopric, suffragan of the Prince-archbishop of Salzburg, then in the southern part of imperial Austria's Styria. Later the area was re-assigned to presentday Slovenia. It became the Slovenian bishopric of Maribor, a suffragan of the Archbishop of Ljubljana, on 5 March 1962...
suffered a major fire. There were no further bishops ordained in the area and the surviving Roman population took refuge in hilltop fortresses while the barbarians settled in the fertile valley.
Repeatedly flooded by the Debantbach, the ruins of Aguntum remained visible until the 16th century, for in 1599 Veit Netlich, a lawyer, mentioned gravestones with "unknown writing" and reported that "according to a myth, here was a heathen city". The historian Theodor Mommsen proposed that the ruins were those of Aguntum, a theory which was confirmed in 1882 when a marble slab inscribed with the name was discovered.
Description
A small museum contains objects discovered during the excavations. These include painted tombstones, pottery masks, bronze objects, coins and interpretive displays.A large modern building covers the remains of the Atrium House, an elegant villa with a fountain and marble table in the atrium. The villa covered an area of 3,000 square yards and is the largest residential building so far discovered in Aguntum.
To the right (east) on leaving the Atrium House are the city gates, which still stand 3-4.5 m high. The walls, which were 8' thick, were constructed of a double wall of cut stone infilled with earth and rubble, have been excavated for 30 m to the north and 75 m to the south, but the circuit of the walls has not been traced beyond this. Presumably the nearby river Debant has so thoroughly covered the site with debris brought down from the mountains.
The date of the wall's construction is uncertain. Materials incorporated in the fill point to the emperor Hadrian, but stylistic grounds favour a 3rd century AD date. An additional question surrounds the purpose of the wall. The Marcomanni Wars around 170 AD have been suggested as the reason, as has the invasion by the Alemanni in the 3rd century AD, but others have suggested that the walls were built primarily to defend the city against flooding or landslides - a not impossible reason if the industry carried on in the town led to extensive deforestation of the surrounding hills. A final suggestion is that the wall and gate were originally built for show, but hastily extended and improved to withstand the Alemanni.
An extensive artisans' quarter has been uncovered, with workshops for various industries. Many of the buildings have their corners protected by large boulders, presumably against the possibility of damage from wheeled vehicles passing through the narrow streets. There is a very large bath house - an indication of the size of the Roman city - with several marble pools separated from the walls of the rooms in which they stand, to allow hot air to circulate under and around them. This is the largest Roman bath complex so far discovered in Austria and was first constructed during the reign of Tiberius
Tiberius
Tiberius , was Roman Emperor from 14 AD to 37 AD. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. His mother divorced Nero and married Augustus in 39 BC, making him a step-son of Octavian...
, but was destroyed in the late first century AD by a fire. It was reconstructed in a more "modern" style and further extended in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.
A forum has been uncovered, to one side of which stands a circular building, possibly part of the so-called "Ostentatious Building". The building itself is square, but an interior wall marks out a large circle which is floored with multi-coloured marble slabs. The perimeter of the circle is divided into a number of chambers. Across the middle of the floor - and probably a later insertion as the building fell into disuse - is a narrow channel whose purpose is not clearly understood.