TERMES
or Termeste, or Termantia, Soria, Spain.
Site near Montejo de Liceras and Osma, an oppidum
belonging to the Arevaci in the Conventus Cluniensis.
Cited by Appian and Diodorus. Mentioned during the
Celtiberian wars when it defeated Q. Pompeius (141
B.C.), but in 97 B.C. it was captured by T. Didius. It
rallied to Sertorius against Rome but was finally subdued. The acropolis stands on a height with defensive
works hewn out of the sandstone, rock-cut dwellings following the contour lines, and a kind of grandstand 70 m high for spectacles.
The Roman town, covering 21 ha, was surrounded by
a wall protected by semicylindrical towers 5 m in radius,
probably dating from the 1st c. A.D. A tunnel 105 m long,
in the lower part of the acropolis, may be an aqueduct,
a fortification, or a sewer. In the center of the town
stands a large rectangular fortification with two covered
passages one over the other. There was apparently a
forum to the NW, a basilica, two or three baths with
mosaics, and a temple. Excavations have yielded sculptures, mosaics, columns, capitals, antefixes, bronzes
(Galba, Tiberius, Apollo, Eros, a warrior) fibulas, pottery, glassware, silver vases, altars, votive and funerary
inscriptions, Celtiberian and Roman imperial coins, almost all of which are in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. There are also some architectural remains of the age of the Visigoths.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
N. Sentenach, “Las ruinas de Termes,”
Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos (1911) 102-16
PI; B. Taracena,
Carta Arqueológica de España. Soria (1941); A. García y Bellido, “Las ‘trullae’ argenteas de
Tiermes,”
ArchEspArq 39 (1966) 113ff.
M. PELLICER CATALAN
