The role of Aquileia as an intermediary in developing contacts and cultural interactions between Rome and Noricum(181 BC-AD 235)

This research represents a step forward in the study of the complex and varied relationship between Rome and Noricum. This province was annexed to the Empire as a kingdom and after a few decades its territory was officially administered by Rome. In this period, however, the process of diffusion and acceptance of Roman culture did not begin in Rome but from an important centre not far from the southern border of Noricum, with which the territory interacted even before submitting to Rome. The research, therefore, focuses on this centre, Aquileia, a Latin colony founded in 181 BC in the eastern corner of the peninsula. Thanks to Aquileia's great epigraphic and archaeological evidence and especially of southern Noricum, it is possible to trace the relationships that characterized the two territories, before the Roman period, during the first contacts with Rome, after the subsequent annexation in the phase preceding the provincialization, and in the two following centuries. Due to Noricum's position at the northern borders of the Empire in an area rich in natural resources, this research benefits from the analysis and examination of different sectors, trade, customs, mine administration, army distribution, the meeting of divinities and artistic fashions. Aquileia and its active and dynamic world, made up of exchanges of goods, but also of men and their cultures, found, thanks to the initiative and ambition of its citizens, a favourable environment, beyond the Alps, in which to undertake new activities. Its citizens started new lives not only in the business sector but often as officers of the army and public administrators thus changing the surrounding context and culture. This research, which benefited from and was based on publications by historians of different nationalities, broadens the state of research about the cultural transformation in Noricum to provide a complete picture from its starting point. The political, economic, topographical, demographic, as well as religious changes which Noricum experienced had their origins in the contacts with the Roman colony of Aquileia. In Noricum, the Adriatic colony contributed to the creation of a new Roman settlement landscape, from its foundation to the Severan age. In this way, this study hopes to offer a new impetus for research that focuses on major nearby cities that acted as intermediaries not only between Rome and the province but also vice versa.