United States or Suriname ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Only one tower remains, with doors on first and second-floor level and a S. Mark's lion in relief. The island was the ancient Curicta, near which there was a sea-fight between the ships of Cæsar and Pompey in 49 B.C., when the Istrians took the part of the latter.
For they considered that neither had a more spirited or warlike enemy ever encountered them nor had the Roman state been ever so sunk in sloth, and unfit for war: that the Sardinians, the Corsicans, the Istrians, and the Illyrians, had rather kept in a state of excitement than exercised the Roman arms; and with the Gauls it had been more properly a tumult than a war.
In 129 B.C. the Istrians rose in revolt when Rome was occupied with the Gepid war. Many Istrians fled into the Karst region, and for a long time the land was unsafe. Julius Cæsar had to take measures to protect Tergeste from raids. The Italianising of the country proceeded apace.
The names of a good many places near are of Roman derivation, but the first definite mention of Pirano is made by the anonymous Ravennese chronicler. In the tenth century the Istrians attacked the possessions of the Patriarch of Grado and of Venice, under the Marquis Winter, who governed for Ugo, king of Italy.
Word Of The Day