Narona
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Naronae Proper-name noun: feminine nominative plural, Proper-name noun: feminine vocative plural, Proper-name noun: feminine genitive singular, Proper-name noun: feminine dative singular of Narona
- a city in Dalmatia, now Opus, Mel. 2, 3, 13; Plin. 3, 22, 26, § 142; Vatin. ap. Cic. Fam. 5, 9, 2; 5, 10, 4; Cic. ib. 13, 77, 3.
NARO´NA (Ναρβῶνα, a mistake for Ναρῶνα, Ptol. 2.17.12, 8.7.8), a town in Dalmatia, and a Roman colonia.I t appears from the letters of P. Vatinius to Cicero (ad Fam. 5.9, 10), dated Narona, that the Romans made it their head-quarters during their conquest of Dalmatia. (Comp. Pomp, Mela, 2.3.13; Itin. Anton.; Peut. Tab.; Geog. Rav. 4.16.) Narona was a conventus,a t which, according to M. Varro (ap Plin. 3.26) 89 cities assembled; in the time of Pliny (l. c.) this number had diminished, but he speaks of as many as 540 decuriaes ubmitting to its jurisdiction.
The ancient city stood upon a hill now occupied by the village of Vido, and extended probably to the marsh below; from the very numerous inscriptions that have been found there, it appears that there was a temple to Liber and Libera, as well as other buildings dedicated to Jupiter and Diana. (Lanza, sopra l'antica cittá di Narona, Bologna, 1842; Neigebaur, Die Sud-Slaven, pp. 116, 122.) A coin of Titus has been found with the epigraph Col. Narona. (Goltz, Thesaurus, p. 241; Rasche, vol. iii. pt. 1. p. 1048.)
When the Serbs or W. Slaves occupied this country in the reign of Heraclius, Narenta, as it was called, was one of the four banatsi nto which the Servians were divided. The Narentine pirates, who for three centuries had been the terror of Dalmatia and the Venetian traders, were in A.D. 997 entirely crushed by the fleet of Venice, commanded by the Doge in person. (Schafarik, Slav. Alt. vol. 2. p. 266.)
[E.B.J]A Roman colony in Dalmatia, situated on the river Naro (Ptol.ii. 16, 5).
An ancient site at the mouth of the Neretva (Narenta) river, whose valley served in all periods as the route for an exchange of the goods between the Mediterranean and the interior of the Balkans. Theopompus (Strab. 7.5.5) mentions it as a port of exchange between the Greeks and Illyrians in the 6th c. B.C. It served as a center for several Roman military campaigns in 156, 77, and 44 B.C. against the Delmatae and other Illyrians whose trading community was established there in the late 2d c. B.C. A seat of conventus iuridicus for the S part of the province of Dalmatia, Narona became the Colonia Iulia Narona between 47 and 27 B.C. The development of Salona in the 1st and 2d c. A.D. overshadowed Narona, whose commercial traffic was lost to the capital of province. A silting of the river mouth and marshes probably hastened this decline. It is last mentioned when its delegates attended Salona church councils in 530 and 533. After that it was probably destroyed by the Avaro-Slavic invasion.
To the NE of the village of Viol parts of the city walls and towers from the colonial period can be seen. The town was built partly on the hill, partly in the plain. Many inscriptions, and architectural and sculptural fragments are built into the walls of the village houses. In the gardens at many places foundations of the architecture with mosaics have been found. Systematic excavations are obstructed because marsh covers the greater part of the site. In the village cemetery some sarcophagi and fragments of sepulchral monuments can be seen. There is a local archaeological collection and also a number of finds in the Archaeological Museum at Split.
BIBLIOGRAPHYC. Patsch, “Narona,” Zur Geschichte und Topographie von Narona (Schriften der Balkankommission, Antiquar. Abteilung, Heft 5; 1907); id., “Aus Narona,” JOAI 16 (1912) 75-82; 1. Marović, “Novi neobjavljeni nalazi iz Narone,” Vjesnik za arheologiju i historiju dalmatinsku 54 (1952) 153-73.
M. ZANINOVIĆ