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The Cyclopean Walls at Tarragona*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
If the description of the 6th century Massalian Periplus, preserved in the Ora Maritima of Rufus Festus Avienus,l does not refer to Tarragona, as almost all scholars agree with Professor Bosch Gimpera2 in believing, then one can only say that to no other city of the Spanish coast can that account of its walls be applied with greater appropriateness.
Seldom does it happen, as at Tarragona, that the ancient walls retain intact throughout the ages the embodiment of history amid the modern life of the city, and nowhere else with such charm and grandeur as that of Cesse with its true Iberian atmosphere. Usually the huge blocks of the primitive cyclopean wall are overlaid with reconstructions and refacings of the Roman, Visigothic and Medieval periods and of the modern Spanish fortifications.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1936
Footnotes
*
Translated by the Editor, who thanks Mr A. W. Clapham, F.S.A., for first drawing his attention to the subject, and Mr W. J. Hemp, F.S.A., for one of the illustrations.
References
1 Callipolis ilia, quae per altam moenium proceritatem et celsam per fastigia subibat auras, quae laris vasti ambitu latere ex utroque piscium semper ferax stagnum impre–mebat.
2 Problemes d’historia antiga i ¿‘arqueología tarragonina. Tarragona, 1925. The site has been placed between Tarraco and Salauris by W. Christ, Avien und die ältesten Nachrichten über Iberien und die Westküste Europa's, (Abhandlungen der K. Bayer. Akademie der W. I. Cl., Band xi, Abt. 1, München, 1865), and A. Schulten (Fontes Hispaniae Antiquae, 1, Avieni Ora Maritima, Barcelona–Berlin, 1922) ; K. Müllenhoff identified it with Barcino (Deutsche Altertumskunde, Berlin, 1890).
3 I thus translate the Spanish ‘ recinto ’ which corresponds to the French ‘ enceinte ’ and the German ‘ Ringwalle ’. The word is used in the west of England to describe the stone walls, usually of large blocks (‘ Giant’s hedges ’). TRANSLATOR.
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