The triumvirs who founded the colony were Publius Scipio Nasica, Gaius Flaminius, and Lucius Manlius Acidinus[3].An important frontier military city since Republican times, it became one of the capitals of the Roman Empire under Maximian.

near the Natissa River as a colony under Latin law,[1] by Lucius Manlius Acidinus,[3] Publius Scipio Nasica and Gaius Flaminius, sent by the senate to bar the way to the neighboring Carni and Histrian peoples who threatened the eastern borders of Italy.

[5] The city first grew as a military outpost in preparation for future campaigns against Histri and Carni, later as "headquarters" for eventual Roman expansion toward the Danube.

The first settlers were 3,000 veterans,[5] followed by their respective families from Samnium, a total of about 20,000 people, who were followed by groups of Veneti; later, in 169 B.C., another 1,500 families were added,[5][6] while eastern communities, such as Egyptians, Jews and Syrians, also settled in the city.Aquileia formed the main base of the military operations in Illyricum of the consuls Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Lupus, Gaius Marcius Figulus, and Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum, during the years 156-155 BC, against the Dalmatian tribes, which then led to the conquest of the city of Delminium.

[13] Four years later, in 115 BC, the consul Marcus Aemilius Scaurus operated in Cisalpine Gaul against both the Ligurians in the west and the Carni and Taurisci in the east, using Aquileia, in the latter case, as his "headquarters.

as a result of the lex Iulia de civitate (which conferred the fullness of Roman law, assigning it to the Velina tribe),[16] grew larger in successive stages, as attested by the various city walls.

It was to serve as an advanced post protecting northern Italy against possible invasions from the north and east, as happened: During his first consulship in 59 B.C., Gaius Julius Caesar, with the support of the other triumvirs (Pompey and Crassus), obtained by the Lex Vatinia of March 1[21] the proconsulate of the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul[22] and Illyricum for five years and the command of an army consisting of three legions.

[25] The fact that Caesar was initially assigned the province of Illyricum as part of his imperium, and that by early 58 BCE as many as three legions had been stationed in Aquileia,[26] may indicate that he intended to seek glory and riches in this very area with which to increase his military and political power and influence.

To this end he probably planned a campaign beyond the Carnic Alps all the way to the Danube, taking advantage of the growing threat from the tribes of Dacia (roughly corresponding to present-day Romania), which had united under the leadership of Burebista, who had then led his people to conquer the territories located west of the Tisza River, crossing the Danube and subduing the entire area over which the present Hungarian plain stretches, but above all coming dangerously close to Roman Illyricum and Italy.

Thus, instead of continuing on his march westward, Burebista had returned to his bases in Transylvania, then turned his sights eastward: he attacked the Bastarnae and finally besieged and destroyed the ancient Greek colony of Olbia (near present-day Odessa).

Numerous inscriptions of the soldiers of the garrison, who resided there for about two centuries, bore the cult of Mitra, and later also that of Christianity.At the time of Augustus, after an initial campaign led by Publius Sillius Nerva in 16 B.C.

following an invasion of Pannonians in Istria and the subsequent Roman conquest of territories as far as Pula and Raša,[43] in 15 B.C, his stepson Tiberius, together with his brother Drusus, led a military campaign against the populations of Rhaetians, settled between Noricum and Gaul,[44] and Vindelici.

[51] A few years later, beginning in 14 B.C, Aquileia again turned out to be instrumental in the subjugation of the whole of Illyricum and Pannonia, under the commands first of Marcus Vinicius,[52][53] then of Augustus' son-in-law and brotherly friend Agrippa,[54] then of his stepson Tiberius.

[55][56][57][58] Aquileia again continued to be an important military center during the Dalmatian-Pannonian revolt of 6-9, forming the last bulwark against the possible threat of an invasion by these peoples, who could thus have reached Rome itself in only ten days.

The city of Aquileia saw, from 168 to 170, immense numbers of troops amassing in its territory, and the fear that this mass gathering might drag along the dangerous disease soon proved well-founded.

In the spring of 168 Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus decided to travel to the Danubian area to reach Carnuntum; Aquileia thus became the first stop, where the imperial general staff was composed of the prefect of the praetorium Titus Furius Victorinus, Pomponius Proculus Vitrasius Pollonius, Daturnius Tullus Priscus, Claudius Fronto, and Adventus Antistius.

The two emperors arrived in Aquileia and worried about the epidemic, which meanwhile had already caused the death of the prefect Furius Victorinus, and sent a letter to Galen requesting him as personal physician for the Germanic campaign.

[72] The increasing prevalence of plague cases in Aquileia led the emperors to decide to withdraw with only a personal escort to Rome; Lucius Verus, who had urged this departure because of his constant ill health, died shortly afterwards in Altinum, stricken with apoplexy (January 169).

[77] Although the balance of forces was still in Maximinus' advantage, the prolonged siege, food shortages and the strict discipline imposed by the emperor caused him to be met with hostility by his troops.

Soldiers of Legio II Parthica tore his images from his military insignia to signal his deposition, then assassinated him in his camp, along with his son Maximus and his ministers (May 10, 238).

[78][79][80] Their heads, cut off and placed on poles, were carried to Rome by messengers on horseback, while the bodies of father and son were mutilated and fed to dogs, a poena post mortem.

[84][85] Upon learning of Claudius's death and the appointment of Quintillus, Aurelian quickly ended the war against the Goths in Thracia and the Moesias, ending the sieges of Anchialus, near modern Pomorie in Bulgaria on the Black Sea, and Nicopolis ad Istrum, to rush to Sirmium, where he was acclaimed emperor: upon this news Quintillus, who had remained in Aquileia, abandoned by his own soldiers, preferred to commit suicide.

following the conquest of the eastern Alpine region, construction of the Via Claudia Augusta was begun, linking Venetia to the banks of the Danube in Noricum (roughly present-day Bavaria) via the Brenner or Reschen Pass.

[93] The continued expansion of the city led to the construction of new and imposing walls in the southern and western parts, first in the time of Maximinus Thrax,[5] then of Flavius Claudius Julianus and Theodosius I.

[5]Maximian, once he became Augustus of the West, preferred to use two capitals: Aquileia (which Ausonius calls the ninth city of the Empire),[94] farther east, as a river-sea port on the Adriatic Sea and a military hinterland, given its proximity to the limes of the Claustra Alpium Iuliarum; Mediolanum, on the other hand, farther west, was positioned to guard the passes north of the great Alpine lakes.

Shortly thereafter he marched on Rome, where he finally defeated Maxentius' army just north of the Eternal City in the decisive Battle of the Milvian Bridge,[103] on October 28, 312.

[122]Aquileia exercised, moreover, a new moral and cultural function with the advent of Christianity, which, according to tradition, was preached by the apostle St. Mark, and whose development was based on a series of bishops, deacons and presbyters who suffered martyrdom.

At the beginning of the 4th century, Chrysogonus, Proto and the brothers Cantius, Cantianus and Cantianilla were martyred, the cult of whom found wide diffusion throughout the territories of the Diocese of Aquileia, from Veneto to Istria, and from Carinthia to Slovenia.

Aquileia finally did not resist to Attila who as a result of the incidental collapse of a wall of the fortification managed to penetrate the city devastating it (July 18, 452) and, by spreading salt on the ruins, took it by forcing the legionaries he had taken prisoners to build siege machines in use by the Romans and massacred or enslaved much of the population.

The large basilica, divided into three naves by twenty-eight columns and without an apse was connected through the baptistery to the catechumenum and preceded by a large cloister (following a pattern also found in the contemporary Augusta Treverorum complex).The authority of its church and the myth of a city that had been powerful survived, although by then its direct dominion was limited to a small territory that had its strengths in the urban area with its seaport and in the village of Grado.