The Tarragona Vortex

Roman Tarraco was the foundation for what came afterward at the same site in Late-Antiquity and the Islamic and Latin Christian periods, but it was an overlay on an Iberian habitation, Cissis, a coastal trading post with the Phocaean Greek partner, Kesse; a Punic counterpart on the other side of the River Tulcis; and above them all a refuge fort on the summit of Mt. Tarrakon. This history traces the amalgamation of these and their Romanization during the Punic Wars I-III, and Rome's conversion of Tarraco into an imperial provincial capital. It was a complex of the main army base, a vast war industry, the government for the Hispania Citerior that became the Tarraconensis, a port, and trade center for the Western Mediterranean. It grew in population to become a major city with sophistication imitating everything Roman, The Hispanic Romans converted this outpost into a walled fortress and magnificent hillside municipality whose city-state encompassed the Camp de Tarragona as its territorium. Its upper tier was built into a terraformed tri-level monumental complex consisting of the temple ceremonial square, a new forum, and a circus with an amphitheater below. The hillside became its intramural residential district, and old Cissis was overbuilt with a lower forum, temple, market, and an entertainment area with a great theater, baths, gardens, and the coastal shelf consisted of a warehouse row, a manufacturing center, fishing villages and an artificial port, and waterworks for the Tulcis and harbor that demonstrated Roman advanced engineering just like the upper city showed off Roman architectural prowess and artistic tastes but also entertainment, i.e., its love of racing and games, bloodlust, and violence, and enjoyment of drama, music, and the brisque. The province would have an extensive road system, a proliferation of provincial towns, wealthy villas, and large-scale farms. The Tarraconensis was reduced in size during the re-organizations of the Empire, and the Roman Ulterior or Baetica became more urbanized as its population became more dense. The powerful northeastern capital followed the history of Rome and decline of the Empire with its interminable wars, barbarian invasions, weakened civic religion, and economic problems leading to the Visigohtic successor state in Late-Antiquity. Roman Tarraco was transformed into Tarracona but its monumental ruins and fabled history remained to be an inspiration to the medieval Restoration movement after the Islamic interlude. These are the subjects of subsequent volumes in this series.