Noreia

Noreia was an ancient city in the eastern Alpine region. Julius Caesar gives the impression that Noreia was the capital of the Kingdom of Noricum. Noreia was already calculated by Pliny the Elder († 79 AD ) to the submerged cities of the West. A number of places in Carinthia and Styria has been considered. Equating with the non- localizable Celtic city Nyrax must be regarded as pure speculation.

Localization

" The dispute over the location Noreias is ancient ." On the basis of ancient Details on distance - 1200 stages of Aquileia - was believed in the 18th century, a position at Murau or Neumarkt in Styria to calculate a location-tracking, which has since been found in numerous reference works, but pulled into the science again and again in doubt been. With the Attic Stadionmaß Strabo the distance would be 213 km, the distance to modern transport routes between Aquileia and Neumarkt in Upper Styria is however 249 km. Even after the Roman stages (223 km) one is on the road from Aquileia ago still in Carinthia (the distance Aquileia - St. Veit an der Glan is 216 km, the Styrian border 238 km ). After " fixing " the situation Noreias Neumarkt their supporters were even tempted to explain the Entfernungsdiskrepanz by a retroactive correction of the statement of Strabo from 1200 to 1500 stadiums.

Noreia must be identical to the excavated nameless Celtic-Roman city on the Magdalen in Carinthia, was a different assumption. Also on the customs field and in Carinthia Glantal Noreia the sanctuary of the local Celtic goddess of fertility in Hohenstein in the community Liebenfels Noreia was suspected. Similarly, it was on the Gurina at Dellach iG in Lölling or Semlach / Cottage Mountain (Franz Ertl, 1969) or the Styrian Wildbad Einoed located, listing the Tabula Peutingeriana as a "post Noreia ", but the original Roman presentation of the famous road map after all, almost half a millennium after the alleged " battle of Noreia " emerged. Even in the headwaters of the river Sava, far from the other places, you have Noreia suspected. The most recent, quite serious theory for the location Noreias by Paul Gleirscher who still suspected it at the 2001 Maria Saal mountain, concerns the Gracarca, a range of hills on St.Kanzian in Carinthia, where an Iron Age settlement and several Celtic princely tombs were found.

2012 presented Reinhard Stradner, an Austrian career officer, due to military scientific principles to the theory that Noreia in space Knappenberg (municipality mountain hut ), Carinthia, was localized. A related book is in preparation.

Curious thing

In 1929, ( community Mills ) was discovered in Styria the supposed Noreia during archaeological excavations in St. Margaret at Silver Mountain. Then the place was even officially renamed with the date of 26 March 1930 in Noreia. Since then, the situation also Celtic Noreia as in Styria is specified on the basis of this modern place name frequently. Over the years however, compacted to doubt the authenticity of the finds, and now it was verified that it is the remains of a medieval settlement in the excavated objects.

Today, the science about it is agreed that the finds from the Silberberg actually have no connection with Noreia.

Ambiguity

It is quite likely that it not only gave a single place, the Noreia said. The word could simply mean only " Noric city ". For a multiple use of the name, among others speak about two identical entries in the Tabula Peutingeriana, the copy from the late 12th century a Roman road map. The older Noreia with about 3.5 km in diameter and a new eponymous city with dimensions of 7.5 x 3.4 km are noted on the territory of modern Styria. However, there is the possibility that it is the two-time entry of a road station called Noreia only a clerical error is, as pointed out already in the 19th century wurde.Auch because on the map, for example, both the long-gone Pompei and the much later founded Konstantin Opel to appear, their factual detail has been put into question.

The Greek historian Strabo and over a century later, Appian of Alexandria reported that in the year 113 BC the Cimbri and Teutons, a Roman army under the consul Cn. Papirius Carbo in the battle " at Noreia " won. However, it is not clear what distance does the mention of a place name in an area with few known sites, even if the location of the battle is ever the same as the capital of the Kingdom of Noricum. How large the uncertainty is, you might recognize the fact that, for example, Sempronius Asellio, a younger contemporary of Polybius, Noreia moved even to Gaul, which may be due to the fact that the Noric long - termed " Transalpine Gaul " - even in Livy were. The source from which Asellio took over the specification, Noreia lay in Gaul, but must have been written before the Kimbernkrieg 113 BC began with the Battle of Noreia, because the Romans used already to 120 BC, the country name Noricum and referred to before 113 BC all the inhabitants of Noricum Kingdom as Noric.