CARMO
(Carmona) Sevilla, Spain.
Town in
Hispania Ulterior 33 km E of Seville. It belonged to the
territory of the Turduli and appears to have been a
municipium, appearing in Agrippa's account as oppidum
civium romanorum or latinorum. Variants of the name
Carmo appear (Caes.
BCiv. 2.19.4;
Strab. 3.141; Ptol.
2.4.10; App.
Hisp. 58;
Bello Alexandr. 57.2; 64.1;
Ant. It.
414.2;
Ravenna Cosmographer 315.5).
Carmo began to mint coins before 133 B.C., the obverse of the ass bearing the head of Mercury and of Mars
or Roma, and the reverse, the name of the mint between
two ears of corn; on later issues, smaller in size, the
reverse type is the same but the obverse bears the head
of Herakles. Surprisingly, while Caesar called it one of
the most important towns in Baetica, it is not mentioned
by Mela and Pliny. Its early remains are buried in the
area extending from the present Ayuntamiento to the
Plaza de Abastos, where there is a large dolmen. Some
graves from the Carthaginian period (ca. 5th c.
with rich grave goods, have been discovered. The name
of a certain Urbanibal, of Carthaginian descent, who
lived during the Roman period, is preserved on a funeral
urn discovered in the Roman cemetery and today in the
Carmona museum.
Remains of the Roman period include part of the wall
(the gates of Seville and Cordoba were modified in the
Arab and mediaeval periods), a large temple, the Roman
cemetery containing underground tombs such as those of
Servilia, Prepusa, Postumius, and the Elephant, and the
amphitheater, which is partly cut out of the rock and
dates from the last quarter of the 1st c. B.C. Portraits,
sculptures, and inscriptions have also been found in the
town and in the necropolis.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. Bonsor,
Memorias de la Sociedad
Arqueológica de Carmona (n.d.); J. D. de la Rada,
Necropolis de Carmona (1885); E. Bonsor,
An Archaeological Sketch-Book of the Roman Necropolis at Carmona (1931); J. Hernández Diaz et al.,
Catálogo arqueológico y artístico de la provincia de Sevilla (1943); C.
Fernández Chicarro,
Excavaciones del anfiteatro de Carmona (in preparation).
C. FERNANDEZ-CHICARRO
