Baetulo
- a river of Hispania Tarraconensis, now the Besos, Plin. 3, 3, 4, § 22; Mel. 2, 6, 3.
BAE´TULOor BAETULLO, a small river of Hispania Tarraconensis, on the E. coast, between the Iberus and the Pyrenees, with a small town of the same name, on the sea-shore near its mouth, an oppidum civium Romanorum. (Mela, 2.6.3; Plin. Nat. 3.3. s. 4.) The river is the Besos, and the town Badelona, a little E. of Barcelona. (Muratori, p. 1033. a. 3; Florez, Esp. S. 24.56, 29.31; Marca Hisp. 2.15, p. 159; Ukert, vol. ii. pt. 1. pp. 292, 421.)
[P.S]Town on the coast of Laietania, 10 km NE of Barcelona, near the mouth of the Baetulo (Besos) in Tarraconensis. The suffix -ilo, typically iberian, suggests that originally it was a native oppidum, which has not been identified. it grew in the 1st c. B.C. when several nearby iberian settlements were abandoned. According to Pliny (HN 3.22) it was an oppidum enjoying Roman rights; it is also mentioned by P. Mela (2.90) and Ptolemy (2.6.18). its prosperity in the 1st-3d c. was due to trade in local wine. The town was reduced to ruins during the invasion of the Franks, but was rebuilt and fortified by great walls, some sectors of which still survive.
Excavation has uncovered Roman houses with mosaics (now in the Barcelona Archaeological Museum) and many inscriptions; the earliest (CIL II, 4606-4608), include an important bronze tabula patronatus. The local archaeological museum, in addition to Roman material, has finds from nearby prehistoric deposits and iberian oppida, in particular the Mas Boscá.
BIBLIOGRAPHYJ. de C. Serra Ráfols, “Excavaciones a Badalona,” Anuari de l'institut d'Estudis Catalans 8 (1927-31) 100; Forma Conventus Tarraconensis, I. Baetulo-Blandae (1928); “Una tabula Hospitalis trobada a Badalona,” Butlletí Museus d'Art de Barcelona 4 (1934) 334; “Excavaciones en Badalona y descubrimiento de la puerta NE de la ciudad,” Ampurias 1 (1939) 268.
J. MALUQUER DE MOTES