IADER
(Zadar) Croatia, Yugoslavia.
A
settlement on the Zadar Peninsula dating from the 9th
c. B.C. Early Greek imports from the end of the
8th c. B.C. have been discovered. In the civil wars between Caesar and Pompey Caesar's naves Iadertinae took
part (
BAlex. 42). About 33 B.C. the settlement attained
colonial rank under Octavian and the rich land was distributed to veterans. The heaps of stone piled at the
edges of fields still preserve the orthogonal grid pattern
of centuriation visible in the aerial photos. An inscription names Augustus as the “parens coloniae” who donated to the city the walls and towers (
CIL III, 13246).
The town had an area of 136 ha enclosed by a circuit
wall with three gates. It had a regular street grid of five
cardines and more decumani with insulae. Mosaics have
been found in the house foundations. The forum was
situated in the W corner of peninsula. It was a double
precinct (ca. 180 x 130 m) of which the E half was
an open market area surrounded by colonnaded porticos
with tabernae and shops. The basilica was on the S side.
To the W was a sacred precinct peribolus with altars and
the capitolium on a podium 3 m high. The three-aisled
temple had six fluted columns in front. Before the temple
stood the altar for sacrifices. Two high columns stood
before the precinct. This forum is Iulio-Claudian or possibly Augustan.
The stone paving of the city is found in many places
in the town to be from 0.5 to 1.5 m deep. The baths are
found in the center of the city.
Outside the city to the E was the amphitheater, destroyed in the 17th c. The necropoleis (1st-4th c.) are
to the E. There are many villae rusticae in the environs.
The aqueduct brought water from the Vrana lake region
40 km distant. Early Christian remains are few. The
town suffered a great cataclysm (earthquake, fire ?) in
the 6th c. A.D.
The finds from archaeological excavations are preserved in the Archaeological Museum at Zadar.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
V. Brunelli,
Stonia della città di Zana, I
(1913); M. Suić, “The Limitation of Roman Colonies on
the Eastern Adriatic Coast,”
Zbornik Instituta za historijske nauke u Zadru 2 (1956-57) 13-50; id., “O
imenu Zadra,”
Zbornik Zadar (1964).
M. ZANINOVIĆ
