Issue date: 23 Sep, 2015
ANCIENT CULTURES
For the second year in a row, the series Ancient Cultures is being issued to commemorate those civilisations that left a mark of their glorious past. “Segobriga”, the name of the Roman city in the times of the emperor Augustus, is an example of one of these once-great cultures.
The stamp features an illustration of the bust of Agrippina Major, the granddaughter of Augustus, wife of Germanicus and mother of Caligula, along with a view of a Roman theatre.
The Segóbriga Archaeological Park, located on a hill close to the town of Saelices (Cuenca), is the best-preserved set of Roman ruins on the Meseta. It appears to have originally been a Celtiberian fort, which was conquered by the Romans in the 2nd century B.C. After the Roman occupation, it became an oppidum or Celtiberian city and until 70 B.C. controlled a vast territory as the capital of this part of the peninsula. The Latin writer Pliny considered it the Caput Celtiberiae or beginning of Celtiberia.
In the time of Augustus, it stopped being an estipendiaria city, which paid tribute to Rome, and was declared a Roman city, inhabited by a significant number of Roman citizens and governed by its laws. It was then that an important economic boom took place, as the city was an important crossroads and a centre for mining lapis specularis, which was used for windows and decorating rooms and floors. As it was a Roman city, an aqueduct, wall, forum, basilica, public buildings, roads, sewers, baths, a theatre and amphitheatre were built. This construction was finished around the year 80 A.D.
The first and second centuries were the height of the city's splendour. In the 4th century the main monuments began to become abandoned, such as the amphitheatre and the theatre, although the city continued to be inhabited. With the Islamic invasion, the citizens fled to the Christian kingdoms in the north, and an Arab fort was built over the old acropolis. After the Reconquest, the population settled in the nearby town of Saelices.
Despite the centuries that have passed, the Segóbriga archaeological complex continues to preserve the original landscape of the Roman era.
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