MAGDALENSBERG
Austria.
A mountain
14 km NE of Klagenfurt, the capital of Carinthia. It
rises to a height of 1058 m from the plain of the Zolifeld, once the site of Virunum, capital of the Province
of Noricum. On its peak stands a small Late Gothic
church, dedicated to St. Helena and St. Magdalena, with
Roman marble blocks here and there in its walls. The
mountain, called Mons Sanctae Helenae in mediaeval
documents, and then Helenenberg until the beginning
of the 20th c., is today generally called Magdalensberg.
It has long been known for its Roman antiquities and
was once a favorite area for illicit digging. In a ruin
field at the remarkable height of ca. 1000 m with an
estimated area of 3.5 sq. km and slightly below the
summit, there was found in 1502 the bronze statue of
the “Helenenberg youth.” It is a life-size Roman copy
of a statue of a Greek athlete from the 5th c. B.C. It is
today located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
At one time it was thought that the settlement had
been a sort of summer resort for wealthy Romans from
Virunum, the neighboring provincial capital. The first
scholarly excavations of the temple shed no light, but
systematic excavations, begun in 1948 and continued annually, have produced definitive insights. The unexpected
and unique results of these excavations on the Magdalensberg (easily reached today by car) justify calling
them the most important archaeological undertaking in
Austria since WW II.
The peak of the mountain (only parts of which have
been investigated) had been fortified by the indigenous
Celtic population before the Roman occupation. A double ring of walls with an earth filling between them
(from about 100 B.C.) protected the large oppidum.
Here, among other structures, was probably a temple
where supposedly the above-mentioned statue resided,
transformed through the addition of new attributes into
the Celtic war god Mars Latobius. Everywhere the terrain is elaborately terraced. The Roman settlement started
on the S slope, ca. 100 m below the peak, and it contains
the oldest Roman buildings in Austria. These are built
of stone and date from different periods. They partly
replace pre-Roman wooden structures. The forum is
located on a plaza (ca. 114 x 55 m), an artificial leveling
of the curved, rocky slope of the mountain. Midway
toward the mountain is the temple area (54.6 x 45.3 m),
within which rises a podium temple (31.2 x 17.6 m),
one of the largest of its kind in the E Alpine area. The
sizable cella (21 x 11 m) has a cellar whose three sections are interpreted as treasure rooms of the Roman
authorities. The temple was dedicated to Roma and
Augustus and was the center of the emperor cult on the
mountain. The building was started under the reign of
the emperor Tiberius but was never finished; only the
foundations remain. On the W side it was connected
with a room exactly 100 Roman feet long, which was
surrounded on three sides by halls. On the narrow W
side a marble-faced platform had been built with steps
leading up to it from both sides. Such a platform served
as the official seat of the representative of Rome for
meetings and court procedures. The building should
therefore probably be designated as the praetorium. Behind the tribunal—on the second floor—was a conference room, its walls decorated with simple frescos of
Augustan times. This room was part of a N-S oriented building complex with a definite threefold structure. Extending toward the mountainside, it rose at
least three floors to a height of ca. 12 m. The middle
section is of the greatest interest and has been called
by the excavators the Repraesentationshaus. There is no
comparable structure in the Imperium Romanum.
Through a corridor and an anteroom one reaches a
square room (6 x 6 m). Here the black and white
mosaic floor is almost completely preserved, and the
walls have been preserved to a height sufficient to disclose provision for 13 niches. This odd number has
been related to the 13 poleis (civitates) which Ptolemy
(
Geog. 2.13.3) mentions in his description of Noricum,
and thus the room has been designated as the archive
(tabularium) of the 13 tribes with a niche for each
tribe's archives on the wooden scroll racks (armaria).
The assumption that this was an official building was
confirmed from 16 fragments of splendid slabs of imported marble containing remains of inscriptions. These
inscriptions honor members of Augustus' family, one for
his wife Livia, two for his daughter Julia. The inscriptions, dating from between 11 and 2 B.C., represent a
tribute from eight Noric tribes; the Norici, Ambilini,
Ambidravi, Uperaci, Saevates, Laianci, Ambisontes, and
Elveti. The Repraesentationshaus can justifiably be considered the seat of the Noric council (conventus Noricorum).
From the archive room, and only from there, one
reaches a curiously furnished hall (11.6 x 5.8 m) of
representational character. It has a hypocaust and on the
long side a low platform, which was probably a bench;
its pillow-like, mosaic-covered back is decorated with
the old symbol of the hippomorphic Celtic god of war,
in a boat which rests on a sled. That we deal here with
Celtic civilization is confirmed by the broad apse on
the narrow side of the room. It contained the sacred
fountain, a normal part of Celtic places of worship.
This room may have been the meeting place of the
Noric council.
To the N and higher than the complex including the
Repraesentationshaus were dwellings or workshops, located on terraces. They were accessible from the forum
by staircases.
To the S and separated by an ancient road was a
palatial villa from Tiberian or Claudian times, its supporting walls jutting from the slope. It contained several
residential terraces, a peristyle, kitchen, bakery, and a
luxurious bath. In excavating one of the terraces valuable
fragments of frescos were found, probably deposited
here as rubble from a dismantled house. It was possible
to reconstruct a few figures, e.g., Iphigeneia holding in
her arm the idol of the Tauric Artemis, a female dancer
holding in her hands a flower garland, and the torso
of a youthful Dionysos. The paintings had been composed as separate varicolored panels, separated from
each other by pilasters and columns. Artistically, these
frescos from the Magdalensberg are comparable to those
from Pompeii. On the basis of style, they must date
from ca. 20 B.C., i.e., before the occupation of Noricum
by the Romans (15 B.C.). They are an important historical and cultural document testifying to the importance of the town on the Magdalensberg in pre-Roman times.
One might have expected to find in the E part of the
forum structures similar to those W of the temple area.
However, the excavations indicate that the settlement of
the Italic merchants, dating from Republican times, was
located here. This settlement had once extended far to
the W, into the vicinity of the Repraesentationshaus. At
one time the whole forum must have been a business
quarter. Many rebuildings and additions indicate a long
duration, from the early 1st c. B.C. on. When the houses
to the E were rebuilt, their terraces were extended out
from the slope. The lower rooms were stores and work-shops, which had been erected over older wooden structures. Many calculating stones and labels for money
bags (tesserae nummulariae) found there furnish interesting information about the business of this trade center.
Especially informative were two cellar rooms in each
of which a niche was dedicated to Mercury. The walls
of these cellar rooms were completely covered with
graffiti, over 300 of them, referring to the extensive trade
and financial transactions on the Magdalensberg. They
referred also to the arrival of customers and local suppliers, indicating that the mountain town was a center
for the trade in Noricum iron and metal goods. The
transalpine importance of the Magdalensberg is evidenced
by the home addresses of the buyers: they came not
only from Aquileia and other country towns in Italy,
but also from Rome, even from Africa (Volubilis). Ancient writers praised the ferrum Noricum which was a
major item of trade. In the earlier layers a number of
smelting furnaces were found and metallurgical analyses confirm the excellent quality of the ferrum Noricum
which had already been produced in the earliest period
on the mountain. In this context the consecration of the
bronze youth is understandable. The donors who had
their names engraved on the right thigh of the statue
were from Aquileia, one of them belonging to the well-known merchant family of the Barbii: their business relations with this trade center were obviously close and
profitable. The consecration is also noteworthy because
it took place before the occupation of the country by
the Romans (15 B.C.) and is proof of the early and
intense trade relations between Italy and Noricum.
A necropolis of the Magdalensberg, the “Lugbichl,”
was on a ridge that branches off to the SE. Burial chambers for cremation remains are situated on both sides
of a road 700 m long. Unfortunately most of the chambers suffered from pillaging and unprofessional excavations in the last century, and are thus not very informative. However, a considerable number of tombstones were
preserved. Not only are they among the oldest found
in the Noric Alps, but are interesting because they belong to the indigenous population. These stones indicate
that a small occupational force was stationed on the
mountain. Some of the soldiers belonged to the Eighth
Legion, which was stationed in Poetovio, some to the
cohors I montanorum, recruited from the local population.
The name of this mountain town is unknown. It came
to an end when the provincial capital Virunum was
founded about A.D. 45. Such a relocation of an old
center situated in a high place to a new one in the
plain was characteristic of Roman administration. After
60 years of occupation, the town on the Magdalensberg
became deserted and desolate.
The excavated ruins are, in large part, preserved and
transformed into a beautiful outdoor museum. The finds
are in the museum on the Magdalensberg and in the
Landesmuseum für Kärnten in Klagenfurt.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
H. Vetters, “Virunum,”
RE IX A 1
(1961) 262ff; R. Egger, “Die Stadt auf dem Magdalensberg ein Grosshandelsplatz. Die ältesten Aufzeichnungen des Metallwarenhandels auf dem Boden Österreichs,”
DenkschrWien, Phil-Hist. Kl. 79 (1961); id. in
EAA 4
(1961) 772f; id. et al.,
Führer durch die Ausgrabungen
und das Museum auf dem Magdalensberg (17th ed.
1974)
MPI; H. Kenner, “Wandmalereien,”
Magdalensberg-Grabungsbericht 13 (1973) 209ff, and continuous reports
in
Carinthia from 139 (1949).
R. NOLL
