Sicca Veneria
Coordinates: 36 ° 10 ′ 25 ″ N , 8 ° 42 ′ 15 ″ E
Sicca Veneria was an ancient city in North Africa on the site of today's El Kef in northern Tunisia.
history
The city was on Dyr Hill, on the road from Carthage to Cirta and Tebessa . It is first used on the occasion of the mercenary war in 241 BC. It was mentioned here after the return of Carthaginian mercenaries in dissatisfaction with their salaries after the First Punic War . Archaeological traces suggest, however, that the settlement has existed since at least the 4th century BC. BC existed, possibly going back to a Numidian foundation. Been moved from Carthage Elymians from Sicily gave the city the nickname Veneria after the name of their goddess of love , at that time also to temple prostitution have played an important role.
Since the war of the Romans against the Numidian king Jugurtha , in which a battle took place near Sicca, the city has belonged to the Roman province of Africa (later Africa proconsularis ). Under Augustus it became the Roman Colonia (Colonia Iulia Veneria Cirta Nova) .
In late antiquity, Sicca Veneria had been the seat of a bishop from the 3rd century AD . Following on from this, there is the titular diocese Sicca Veneria of the Roman Catholic Church . In the 7th century the city became Muslim with the Islamic expansion , followed by centuries of loss of importance. Only with the expansion of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century did the city, still known as El Kef , experience a renewed boom.
A small amphitheater and a theater, remains of a thermal bath and two basilicas can still be seen from the ancient city . The city wall comes from late antiquity.
Sicca was the hometown of the Christian rhetorician Arnobius .
The ancient Roman thermal baths ...
… In today's urban area of El Kef.
Mosaic in the thermal baths
literature
- Abdelmajid Ennabli: Sicca Veneria (Le Kef) Tunisia . In: Richard Stillwell et al. a. (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-03542-3 .
- Werner Huss : Sicca Veneria. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 11, Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01481-9 .
- Marcel Le Glay : Sicca Veneria. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 5, Stuttgart 1975, column 162.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Polybios 1, 66-67.
- ↑ Tunesieninformationen.de: History of El Kef ( Memento of the original from September 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Ursula Eckert, Ingrid Retterath: Tunisia. Individual travel guide. Reise Know-How Verlag, Bielefeld 2003, p. 382.
- ↑ Valerius Maximus 2: 6, 15 .
- ^ Sallust , Bellum Iugurthinum 56, 3-6 .
- ↑ CIL 8, 1632 et al
