Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/905

 SALONA. Caesar's. (Cues. B. C. iii. 9.) The profllgats Ga- binius, after being cooped up for months in the fortress, died here. (Auct. B. Alex. 43 ; Dion Cass. xlii. 12.) In B. c. 39 Asinius Polho defeated the Par- theni, who had espoused the cause of Brutus and Cassius, and took Salonae, in commemoration of which his son Asinius Gallus bore the " agnomen " Sa'ioninus (Comp. Virg. Bucol. viii. 7 ; Hor. Carm. ii. 1 . 14 — 16.) From the time it received a colony it was looked upon as the great bulwark of the Roman power on that side the Adriatic, and was distin- guished for its loyalty, as was sho^vn in the siege it maintained against Bato the native leader, A. D. 6. All the great Roman roads in Dalmatia met at this point, and when the country was divided into three " ccnventus," or assize towns, as many as 382 " decuriae " were convened to it. (Plin. iii. 26.) Under the earlier emperors the town was embel- Ushed with many public buildings, the number of which was greatly increased by Diocletian, who, according to Porphyrogenitus (de Adm. Imp. 29), completely rebuilt the city. No great change took place for nearly two centuries after the death of that emperor ; but if we are to believe Porphy- rogenitus (Z. 0.) the " long Salonae " attained to half the size of Constantinople. In a. d. 481 Sa- lonae was taken by Odoacer, king of the Heruli, but was recovered from the Goths by the Gepid prince Mundu-s, the general of Justinian. Totila occupied it for a time. Little is known of these sieges, except that it was partially destroyed. (Procop. B. G i. 5, 7, 17, &c.) It soon recovered from these diasters; and it was from Salonae that Belisarius in 544, and Narses in 552, set out to rescue Italy from Totila and the Goths. (Comp. Gibbon, c. xliii.) The Avars invaded Dalmatia in 639, and, advancing upon Salonae, pillaged and burnt the town, which from that time has been deserted and in ruins. (Const. Porph. I. c.) The town po.-;sessed a dock- yard, which, from Strabo's (vii. p. 315) account, seems to have been the only one deserving that name on the Dalmatian coast. The present state of the place ofters many illustrations of past events ; tlie following works touch very fully upon the remains of the fortifications and other ruins ; Wil- kinson, Dalmatia, vol. i. pp. 151 — 164; Neigebaur, Die Sud-Slaven, pp. 151 — 164; Lanza, Antiche lapide SalonilaTie inedite, Zara, 1850; F.Carrara, Topografia e Scavi di Salona, Trieste, 1850. The fame of Salonae mainly rests upon its neigli- bourhood having been chosen by Diocletian as the place of his retirement. That emperor, after his resignation, spent the last nine years of his life in the seclusion of the palace which has given its name to Spahito. Spalato, often erroneously called Spa- latro. in Illyric Split, is a corrupted form of Salonae Palatium or S. Palatium. The building of the palace, within the precincts of which the greater part of the modern town is constructed, occupied twelve years. The stone, which was very little inferior to marble itself, was brought from the quarries of Tragurium. After the death of Dio- cletian, but little is known of the palace or its occupants. Part of it was kept by the magistrates of Salonae, as a state palace ; and part was occupied by the " Gynaecium," or cloth manufactory, in which women only were employed, — whence the name. It was tenanted by the phantom emperors of the West, Glycerins and Julius Nepos, the latter of whom was nmrdered here. When Salonae was captured by the Avars, the houseless citizens fled to SALl'INUM. 885 the massive structure of the palace for shelter : the settlement swelled by the arrival of their country- men became a Roman city under the name of AsPALATHUM, and paid an annual tribute of 2U0 pieces of gold to the Eastern emperors. (Const. Forph. I. c.) The palace is nearly a square, terminated at the four corners by a quadrangular tower. Ac- cording to the latest and most accurate admeasure- ments, the superficial content, including the towers, occupies a space of a little more than eight acres. (Wilkinson, Z)a?maii(i, vol. i. pp. 114 — 143 ; Neige- baur, Die Sud-Slaven, pp. 134 — 151.) The en- tire building was composed of two principal sec- tions, of which the one to the S. contained two temples — one dedicated to Jupiter the other to Aesculapius — and the private rooms of the em- peror. Two streets intersected each other at right angles, nearly in the centre of it; the principal one led from the Porta Aiirea, the main entrance on the N. front, to a spacious court before the vestibule; the other ran in a direct line from the W. to the E. gate, and crossed the main street just below the court. What remains is not enough to explain the distribution of the various parts of the interior. By a comparison of what existed in his time with the precepts of Vitruvius, Adams (Antiquities of Diocletian's Palace, 1764) has composed his inge- nious restoration of the palace. (Comp. Gibbon, c. xiii.) All the gates, except the Porta Argentea, were defended by two octagonal towers; the priucijial or " golden gate " still remains nearly perfect. The temple of Jupiter is now the " Duomo," and that of Aesculapius is a baptistery dedicated to St. John. Diocletian's palace marks an aera; — columnar was so combined with arched architecture, that the arches were at first made to rest upon the enta- blature, and afterwards were even forced imme- diately to spring from the abacus, in violation of the law of statics, which requires undiminished and angular pillars under the arch; at length the enta- blature itself took the form of an arch. (Miiller, Ancient Art, § 193.) But although this archi- tecture oifends against the rules of good taste, yet these remains may serve to show how directly the Saracens and Christian architects borrowed from Roman models many of the characteristics which have been looked upon as the creation of their own imagination. (Comp. Hope, Architecture, vol. i. c. viii.; Freeman, Hist, of Architecture, p. 152.) A plan of the palace of Diocletian, taken from Adams, will be found in Fergusson's Handbook of Architec- ture, vol. i. p. 356, accompanied by an .account of the general arrangements of the building. [E.B. J.] SALPESA, a Roman municipium in Hispania Baetica, SE. of Ilispalis, at the ruined Facialcazar, between Utrera and Coronil. (Fiorez, Esp. Sayr. ix. p. 17; Mionnct, Suiy])l. i. p. 44.) [T. H.D.J SALPI'NUM (Etk. Salpinas), an ancient city of Etruria, mentioned only by Livy (v. 31, 32), who speaks of the Salpinates as assisting tiie Volsinians in their war against Rome in b. c. 389. It is clear from the manner in which they are here .spoken of that they were an indejjendent people, with a con- siderable territory and a fortified city ; and the man- ner in which they are associated with the jxiwerful Volsinians would lead to the inference that they also must have been a people of considerable power. Yet no subsequent mention of their name is found, and all trace of their existence disapiK>ars. Niebuhr conjectures that Salpinum occupied the site of th<j 3 L 3