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Italica ((スペイン語:Itálica); north of modern day Santiponce, 9 km NW of Seville, Spain) is a magnificent and well-preserved Roman city and the birthplace of Roman Emperors Trajan and Hadrian. The modern town of Santiponce overlies part of the pre-Roman Iberian settlement and the Roman city. ==Roman history== Italica was founded in 206 BC by the great Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio (later given the nickname ''Africanus'') to settle his victorious veterans from the Second Punic Wars against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, and close enough to the Guadalquivir to control the area.〔Appian, Iberian Wars 38〕 The name ''Italica'' reflected the veterans' Italian origins. The "old town" or ''urbs vetus'' dating from the Republican period lies under the present town of Santiponce. The nearby native and Roman city of Hispalis (Seville) would always remain a larger city, but Italica became an important centre of Roman culture. Italica was later the birthplace of the Roman emperors Trajan and Hadrian (and possibly Theodosius I〔Marcellinus Comes: Annales〕), and thrived especially under the patronage of Hadrian. He expanded the city northwards as the ''urbs nova'' or "new city" and elevated it to the status of ''colonia'' as ''Colonia Aelia Augusta Italica'' upon its request, even though Hadrian expressed his surprise as it already enjoyed the rights of "Municipium".〔Aulus Gellius (Noct. Attic. XVI, 13, 4)〕 He added temples, including a ''Trajaneum'' venerating Trajan, and rebuilt public buildings. Italica’s amphitheatre seated 25,000 spectators, half as many as the Colosseum in Rome and the third largest in the Roman Empire, even though the city's population at the time is estimated to have been only 8,000, and shows that the local elite demonstrated status that extended far beyond Italica itself through the games and theatrical performances they funded as magistrates and public officials. In the same period was built a new elite quarter with several beautiful (and expensive) houses decorated with splendid mosaics visible today. However at the end of the 2nd century AD the city began to decline for political and economic reasons, without ever being completed. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Italica」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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