Municipium Flavium Irnitanum: a Latin Town in Spain

Abstract

It is understandable that the small town of Irni attracted no attention from historians and geographers in Antiquity. Pliny the Elder, whose lists of cities in the provinces include so many insignificant as well as important communities, eschews any mention of it; in his eyes it will have been neither ‘dignum memoratu’ nor ‘Latio sermone dictu facile’ (NHIII, 7). It was left to the enterprise of amateur archaeologists equipped with modern metal-detectors to bring to light the city law, and with that the existence of the city itself. The story of the find and of the stages leading to publication is recounted by J. González in the original publication of two years ago, and need not be repeated here. It is beyond question that it represents an extraordinary enrichment of our knowledge of the Roman city, not just in the Iberian peninsula but throughout the Roman Empire.