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equal tribes under their own
princes or kings, whose names appear on coins, or whether the
Norici and their king held hegemony over the other tribes in the region remains unanswered.
The kingdom’s capital was perhaps a settlement excavated at Magdalensberg near Zollfeld in
Carinthia. This was the first acknowledgement, later confirmed on many occasions, of the
importance of the central Carinthian space for various politically organised states in the
eastern Alpine region – from the Roman province of Noricum to the Slavic principality of
Carantania and the Duchy of Carinthia. Celeia (Celje) was another centre of the kingdom of
Noricum and in the first century BC home to a mint for silver Noric coins.
The Romans established good economic and political relations with the Celtic tribes of
the Norican kingdom very early on. It is likely that Rome offered Noricum the status of public
hospitality (hospitium publicum) as early as 170 BC. Noric steel (ferrum Noricum) from the
region was highly prized throughout Italy, and was generally controlled by traders from
Aquileia. The Romans founded this important trading centre in present-day northeastern Italy
in 181 BC, in response to an unsuccessful attempt in 186 BC by one of the Celtic tribes to
occupy the territory later known as Friuli, which the Romans considered as falling within
their own sphere of interest: this was, approximately, to define Italy’s political border to the
east from that time onward.
However, Slovene territory in the Late Iron Age was not completely occupied by
Celts. The Taurisci and somewhat later the Latobici had an impact on the former Halstatt
cultural centres of Dolenjska, Štajerska and Koroška (the settlement area of the Latobici is
particularly well documented in the names of two Roman settlements: Municipium Flavium
Latobicorum Neviodunum (Drnovo pri Krškem) and Praetorium Latobicorum (Trebnje) in
northeast
ern Dolenjska), but not those in Notranjska, the Soča river basin, and Bela Krajina.
Archaeological material and written sources indicate that these were home to the Japodi and
Carni tribes. Excavations at Stična have shown that a large indigenous population of Illyrians
remained in Dolenjska.
Roman encroachment into the territory of the Celtic and Illyrian tribes started in the
second century BC. Soon after the founding of Aquileia, the Romans expanded their influence
to Istria and its inhabitants, the Histri. The First Pannonian War took place in the 150s BC,
and the Second Pannonian War in 119 BC. In 129 BC the Taurisci were defeated, in 115 BC
the Carni, but in 113 BC the Roman army was defeated in battle near the as-yet-unlocated
Noreia by the Germanic tribes, the Cimbri and Teutons, who had invaded the eastern Alpine
Noric lands. The main phase of incorporating the eastern Alpine and northwestern Balkan
region into the Roman state followed in the final decades BC, when, from 35 to 33 BC, Rome
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subjugated the Delmatae, Pannonii and Japodi, extending its border far to the east. The area
up to the central Danube region was only fully incorporated into the Roman state after the
Pannonian War, between 16 and 9 BC, and after the Pannonian-Delmatae revolt had been put
down in 6 to 9 AD, when Istria was incorporated into Italy. The eastern Alpine Norican
kingdom, the last major organised Celtic polity in continental Europe, was incorporated into
the Empire without war around 10 BC, probably in part due to the friendly relations between
Rome and the Norici. Three honorific inscriptions dated to that time have been found at
Magdalensberg, in which eight Noric tribes pay homage to the ruling Augustan dynasty. The
border of the Roman Empire had now moved from the edge of present-day Italy to the
Danube. A similar expansion was to take place in the area eight centuries later, when
Charlemagne defeated the Avars to significantly expand the southeastern borders of the
Carolingian state.
SLOVENIA ROMANA
The Roman conquests that brought the independence of local tribes to an end were
soon followed by administrative organisation of the region into provinces, incorporating it
into the Roman state and legal order. The west of Slovenia, to Ad Pirum (Hrušica), was
already fully considered part of Italy by the Augustine era (Regio X – Venetia et Histria). In
around 10 AD, the province of Pannonia was created, the western parts of which reached to
modern-day Posavje, along the Sava river. The eastern Alps, from the Danube in the north to
the Savinja river basin (Celeia) in the south, was not incorporated into the Empire as a
province Noricum until after the reign of Emperor Claudius, in the middle of the first century
CE. With the exception of Pannonia, which was divided at the start of the second century,
during the reign of Trajan, into westerly Pannonia Superior, and easterly Pannonia Inferior,
these provinces remained unchanged until the middle of the second century. At that time,
incursions by the Quadi and Marcomanni, which in 166 reached as far as Aquileia, led to the
Italian border being moved eastward from Emona (Ljubljana) – to Atrans (Trojane). The last
major reorganisation of provinces in the region was carried out by Diocletian at the end of the
third century. Noricum was divided by the main Alpine ridge into a northerly part (Noricum
Ripense), which covered the area along the Danube, and a southerly part (Noricum
Mediterraneum). The latter included the modern-day Slovene region of Štajerska, comprising
the areas centred on ancient Celeia (Celje) and Poetovio (Ptuj). Pannonia Superior, which
included the southeasterly part of today’s Slovene territory, was divided into the northerly
Pannonia Prima and southerly Pannonia Savia, which had its capital in Siscia (Sisak). This