ASIDO
(Medina Sidonia) Cádiz, Spain.
A
Roman colony near the S coast of Baetica and belonging
to the juridical area of Hispalis (Seville) (
Plin. 3.11).
It is SE of Cádiz. The name appears to be of Punic
origin, as shown by its bilingual coins. The mint employed the Libyo-Phoenician alphabet, and the leading
motifs were the bull, the dolphin, and the full-front head
of Hercules. Later it coined asses and semisses bearing
ears of grain and fish. Variants of the name appear in
Ptolemy (2.4.10) and in the Ravenna Cosmographer
(317.9).
Remains include portraits, busts, togate figures, statues
of divinities, sarcophagi, inscriptions, columns, cameos,
rings, and coins. Among these finds are the epigram, now
in the archaeological museum of Seville, dedicated to
the quattuorvir Quintus Fabius Senica by the Municipes
Caesarini (perhaps a relative of the Fabia Prisca of
Asido, who occurs in a Cordova inscription), and the
portraits of Livia and Tiberius now in the archaeological
museum of Cádiz. The Roman town must lie under the
modern one, as remains of buildings have been recorded
in the area of the present convents of S. Francisco and
S. Cristobal, and the Calle Althaona Vieja. No Phoenician or Punic remains have been found, but there has
been no deep excavation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. Romero de Torres,
Catálogo Monumental de España: Provincia de Cádiz (1934) 174, 210;
A. García y Bellido, “Las colonias romanas de Hispania,”
Anuario de Historia del Derecho español 29 (1959)
476ff;
Mélanges André Piganiol (1966) III, 481ff.
C. FERNANDEZ-CHICARRO
