Micia
Roman camp, port, and customs control center on the river Murel, several kilometers from the town of Deva.
The earth camp (360 x 180 m), which barred the admission to the province from the W, was rebuilt in stone under Antoninus Pius (138-61). Cohors II Flavia Commagenorum was stationed here permanently, and temporarily ala I Augusta Ituraerorum Sagittariorum, ala I Hispanorum Campagonum, and Numerus Maurorum Miciennsium, a vexillatio of Legio XIII Gemina.
A civil settlement—pagus Miciensis—belonging to the territory of Ulpia Traiana, developed round the camp. In its immediate vicinity are the baths and the amphitheater. The baths spread over an area of more than half a hectare. They were built in the middle of the 2d c. and rebuilt under Septimius Severus (193-211) and again under Severus Alexander (222-35). The Amphiteatrum castrense, elliptical in shape, has an arena 31.60 by 29.50 m. A stone wall, 104 m in circumference, had four entrances, separating the arena from the wooden stands for spectators.
The ruins of the port and of the commercial district have been discovered N of the camp, and to the E private buildings and a group of five furnaces for ceramics and building materials. To the S was a temple of the Moorish gods and a temple of Jupiter Erapolitanus. In the E part of the settlement is a necropolis where an impressive number of funeral monuments, worked in the Micia workshop, have been discovered.
Archaeological material from the 4th c., both epigraphic and numismatic, are in the History Museum of Transylvania in Cluj, the Deva-Hunedoara county Museum, and the History Museum of the Socialist Republic of Romania, Bucharest.
BIBLIOGRAPHYC. Daicoviciu, “Micia, Cercetări asupra castrului,” Anuarul Comisiunii Monumentelor Istorice Secţia pentru Transilvania 3 (1930-31) 1-43; id., “Templul Maurilor,” Sargetia 2 (1941); O. Floca & V. Vasiliev, “Amfiteatrul militar dela Micia,” Sargetia 5 (1968) 121-51.
L. MARINESCU