David Espinosa-Espinosa

Complutense University of Madrid | UCM · Departamento de Historia Antigua

This work aims to propose a coherent interpretation for the presence of the quattuorviratus in the historical evidence belonging to a group of coloniae and municipia from Hispania, both in Republican and Imperial times. To this end, the historiographical views regarding the legal and administrative meaning of the quattuorviratus in the Hispanian pr...

En los próximos meses celebraremos en la Facultad de Geografía e Historia de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid el Ciclo de Seminarios "Vulnerabilidad Social, Política y Jurídica en el Mediterráneo Antiguo", donde tendremos la oportunidad de escuchar la voz experta de especialistas en el Mundo Antiguo centrada en torno a la idea de la vulnerabili...

Ancient Gaul was transformed during the reign of Augustus (r. 31 BC–14 AD) through a major programme of city building. The new Roman cities were constructed according to topographic, health and ritual considerations, and we hypothesise that their orientations also reflect distinct celestial conceptions held by the Gauls and by the Roman emperor Aug...

The winter solstice shaped Rome and its landscape from the ancestral cult of Saturnus as primordial god of the Roman territory before the city’s founding to its use by Augustus as one of the signs of his multiple celestial and solar connections. The important feasts around this date are well known and, in this paper, we propose to demonstrate how s...

This paper provides a preliminary approach to the possible causes for an ideological shift among the members of the Latin municipal elites between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Such change would have been a part of the internal factors, which contributed to the decline of the Latin municipal system in the western provinces. This would have translat...

Despite the long tradition of studies on early medieval churches, little is still known about the reasons behind the selection of specific places for building churches between the fifth to tenth centuries a.d. Thanks to some rich historical documents, the region of A Mariña (Galicia, north-west Iberia) represents an exceptional case study in order...

Urbanism in most areas of Western Europe occurred at the time of the Roman Empire when several hundred new towns were founded, notably under Augustus. Those towns were planned to incorporate astronomical phenomena as images of propaganda of their rulers, or to connect the city to the gods. The visual effect of the Sun rising in line with the orient...

Este trabajo tiene por objeto dar a conocer las contribuciones del proyecto «Epigraphica 3.0: Hacia la creación y diseño de un corpus digital de inscripciones latinas de la Provincia de Ourense» en materia de documentación, estudio y difusión del patrimonio epigráfico gallego. Para ello se presenta un conjunto de experiencias y prácticas de investi...

El objetivo de este trabajo es contribuir al establecimiento de unas bases teóricas para el estudio del problema histórico (e historiográfico) que constituye la existencia de un conjunto de ciudades hispanas denominadas oppida veteris Latii por Plinio el Viejo. Para ello, tras la definición del problema de investigación, se presentan las distintas...

Digital Image Modelling is becoming a standard approach in epigraphic studies, mostly expressed in the diffusion practice of research groups which want their materials being publicly accessible. However, there is an important lack of works which seek for the use of 3D tools to improve the epigraphic analysis and text reading. Therefore, this paper...

This paper presents the results of a non-photorealistic rendering approach to analysing Roman inscriptions, which uses line drawings to highlight the text of two epigraphs from Galicia in north-west Spain. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/back-to-basics-a-nonphotorealistic-rendering-method-for-the-analysis-of-texts-from-3d...

This article attempts to provide a plausible explanation of a series of expressions used by Pliny the Elder to designate a significant number of communities in Hispania: [oppida] Latio antiquitus donata , [oppida] Latinorum ueterum , oppidani Latii ueteris , [oppida] Latii antiqui and oppida ueteris Latii (Plin. HN 3.7, 3.18, 3.24, 3.25, 4.117). Th...

In the light of an interdisciplinary rereading of the literary, archaeological and epigraphic evidence provided by the oppidum Ubiorum/ Ara Ubiorum and the oppidum Batavorum/Batavodurum, this paper aims to propose an earlier legal and administrative integration for certain civitates in the Rhine area, such as the civitas Ubiorum and the civitas Bat...

There is increasing evidence to suggest that cosmological factors were applied in the planning and orientation of Roman towns, at least under Augustus. Among others, this is the case of Colonia Augusta Praetoria Salassorum (Aosta) in Italia, Colonia Urbs Iulia Nova Carthago (Cartagena) in Hispania Citerior Tarraconensis, Colonia Copia Claudia Augus...

A key factor in planning and orienting towns in the Roman world, and in particular in Augustan towns, was cosmology. The application of cosmological criteria in these towns, associated with specific political and religious principles of the principate of Augustus, has been already identified in Italia, Gallia, and Hispania. In this article we exami...

Resumen El propósito del presente trabajo es evidenciar la necesidad de atribuir a Cesse / Tarraco un estatuto jurídico-administrativo privilegiado con anterioridad a la fundación cesariana de Colonia Urbs Triumphalis Tarraco con la finalidad de conciliar, de una forma satisfactoria, morfología urbana, protagonismo histórico y romanización cultural...

The aim of the present paper is to extend the archeoastronomical study sample on the orientation of Roman cities to the analysis of a number of cases in the Rhine area. The starting point is a study of the orientation of Augusta Treverorum (present day Trier; Goethert, 2003). Goethert assumed that the orientation of the decumanus maximus was toward...

RESUMEN: A la luz de las recientes publicaciones sobre la probable existencia de un amplio programa de colonización latina en Hispania durante la República romana, el objetivo del presente trabajo es examinar dos comunidades como Salduie y Contrebia Belaisca que, pese a no disfrutar de un estatuto jurídico‐admi‐ nistrativo romano en época republica...