The location of passages over the middle Krka River in antiquity

Abstract

The area of the Krka River is one of the most striking natural phenomena of inland Dalmatia. As early as protohistoric times the Krka marked the border between two Illyrian tribes, Liburnians and Delmatians. It came in the sphere of Roman expansion policy as early as 128 BC, when Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus reached the river. Octavianus' troops crossed the Krka in AD 33-34 and it was there that battles took place during the great Pannonian-Delmatian uprising of AD 6-9, as testified by the historians Strabo. Appian and indirectly, Plinius the Elder. Under Roman rule, the river was spanned by three bridges, two of them at the mid-course, and the third towards its lower part, near Skradin. The passage on the road Salonae-Burnum, contrary to its usual location at the Brljan Falls, in fact was built along the Bobodol limestone barrier, as evidenced by numerous finds of material culture and the vestiges of the bridge itself, rescued from the limestone waterbed in the late eighteenth century and in the mid-nineteenth. Roman dedicatory inscriptions to Mars and Neptun, as well as the ornamented fragment of an architrave, a Corinthian capitel and a spiral column may suggest a Roman temple by the bridge. The passage by the Roški Falls, on the road Promona-Varvaria, was also important. It is by this waterfall that ever since the Pannonian-Delmatian uprising a unit of Roman veterans was stationed, as confirmed by four tombstone inscriptions, while later on the road was secured by Augustus' evocati, as evidenced by dedicatory inscriptions to Mars and Latra. Judging by the finds from Brištani, Mratovo and the island of Visovac, in the vicinity of the Roški Falls there also were civilian settlements, rustic villas. The river briefly restored its strategic importance by the very end of antiquity, under Justinian, during the Roman-Gothic wars of 535-537.

U vreme rimske dominacije, drumski prelazi preko reke Krke, za prelaz i gradnju mostova koristili su sedrene barijere krčkih slapova, Bobo dol i Roški slap u srednjem toku reke, i Skradinski buk, u donjem delu Krke. Kod slapova Bobodol i Roški Slap pronađeni su rimski nadgrobni natpisi legžjskih veterana, posvetni natpisi, Martu i Neptunu, i Latri, delovi hrama, i protočna česma u obliku lavlje glave, što nam pomaže da precizno ubiciramo prelaze; tim više što su na trasi drumova, nadomak mostova, pronađeni tragovi civilnih naselja, rustičnih vila, koji potvrđuju ubiciranje rimskih drumskih pravaca.