Pregledni rad
ABOUT THE NAMES OF THE TOWN AND THE ISLAND RDKRK DURING THE ROMAN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES
Danko ZELIĆ
Sažetak
In the written sources of the Roman antiquity the town and the Island of Krk are mentioned as Curicum and Curictica (insula). Both names are derived from that of the most important pre-Roman community, i. e. Curictae. The different variants can be found in numerous texts, from Strabo, Pliny, Plolemy to Tabula Peuntingeriana. During the Medieval period, however, the island and the town of Krk were referred to as Vecla (Vegla, Vitula, edc) which is, according to the language experts, the name derived from the late-antiquity Latin adjective *vetula, meaning (civitas) vetus. The scholars have so far pointed out to the two facts: l) That the name *civitas vetus implies the existence of the other urban settlement on the island, the hypothetical *civitas nova: 2) That the Croatian name Krk (which is also the official name of the town and the island as well) is related to the pre-Roman name. Discussing the earlier hypotheses on the location of*civitas nova, the author renounces any
possibility of its existence somewhere in the district of the town of Krk. Krk has been (and still is) just one, although the most important, of the five centres of the island 's districts which
took their shapes before the Roman conquest (1st century BC). Therefore, the hypothetical *civitas nova should be Fulfinum, the only urban centre which was of equal rank during the Roman period. It was built ex novo during the 1st c. on the territory of the indigenous community of the Fertinates (mentioned by Pliny) who supported Pompeius during the Civil war and were consequently dispersed and/or destroyed. Fulfinum, according to the pres en t
knowledge. Inhabited mostly by the Latin-speaking. I. e. non-indigenous population, was in that aspect clearly opposed to Curicum in which the pre-Roman traditions prevailed long
after the Roman conquest. However, Fulfinum ceased to exist during the late Roman period. The proposed conclusions could be therefore summarized in the following ways. ad l) it was the community of citizens of Fulfinum (*civitas nova) which migrated to the older centre, i. e. Curicum and thus it begun to be called by their name- Vecla (*civitas vetus); ad 2) the fact that the Croats took over the pre-Roman name of the town and the island of Krk is a further
proof that, along with the communities of Curictae and Fertinates who lived on the S and NW parts of the island, the NE (less fertile) parts of the island (whose historic centres are Dobrinj and Vrbnik) were - during the Roman antiquity period - inhabited by the unknown indigenous communities. Unaffected by the Roman rule, they survived the fall of the Empire and lived long enough to eventually transmit the prehistoric names of the island and its capital to the Croats who settied on these parts of the island at the beginning of the Early-medieval period.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
77634
URI
Datum izdavanja:
14.6.1995.
Posjeta: 3.535 *