'Muros, turres, portas faciendas coeravit': Remarks on the chronology of the foundation of 'Barcino'

Abstract

Recent research has significantly improved our knowledge about the foundation of the Roman city of Barcino (Barcelona, Spain). However, while these studies have collected some encouraging evidence for a late-Republican chronology, the Augustan chronology traditionally granted to this foundation (around B.C. 10) has not been questioned at all. This article aims to analyse old and new literary, epigraphic, topographic, architectural, and archaeological data, to recover the Caesarean chronology (around B.C. 45-44), which was previously defended from the middle of the 19th century through to the end of the 1970s, and to draw from this study some more general historical conclusions on the process of the romanization of Catalonia.