Carniola
Carniola was a historical region that comprised parts of present-day Slovenia. Although as a whole it does not exist anymore, Slovenes living within the former borders of the region still tend to identify with its traditional parts Upper Carniola, Lower Carniola, to a lesser degree with Inner Carniola. In 1991, 47% of the population of Slovenia lived within the borders of the former Duchy of Carniola. A state of the Holy Roman Empire in the Austrian Circle and a duchy in the hereditary possession of the Habsburgs part of the Austrian Empire and of Austria-Hungary, the region was a crown land from 1849, when it was subdivided into Upper Carniola, Lower Carniola, Inner Carniola, until 1918, its capital was Krainburg, for a short period Stein, from the second half of the 13th century, Laibach or Ljubljana. Nowadays, its territory is entirely located in Slovenia, except for a small part in northwest Italy, around Fusine in Valromana. Carniola in its final form, established in 1815, encompassed 9,904 km2.
In 1914, before the beginning of World War I, it had a population of under 530,000 inhabitants. The Julian and Karavanken Alps traverse the country; the highest mountain peaks are 4,200 feet. The principal rivers are Sava, Tržič Bistrica, Kamnik Bistrica, Ljubljanica, Mirna and Kolpa, which serves as a boundary with Croatia; the principal lakes are Black Lake, spreading into seven lakes, of which the highest is over 6,000 feet above sea level. It was known to the Romans as Lugea palus, is a natural curiosity. Dante Alighieri mentions it in his Divine Comedy; the Ljubljana Marshes cover an area of 76 square miles. Hot and mineral springs are to be found at Sušica, Šmarjetske, Medijske. There is an interesting cave at Postojna. Agriculture thrives better in Upper than in Lower Carniola; the Vipava Valley is famous for its wine and vegetables, for its mild climate. The principal exports are all kinds of vegetables, clover-seed, carvings and honey. In the mineral kingdom the principal products are iron, quicksilver, manganese and zinc.
Upper Carniola has the most industries, among the products being lumber, woollen stuffs, lace, straw hats, wicker-work, tobacco. The railroads are the Juzna, the Prince Rudolf, the Bohinjska, the Kamniska, the Dolenjska, the Vrhniska; the principal cities and towns are: Kamnik, Kranj, Tržič, Vipava, Turjak, Metlika, Novo Mesto, Vače. The mean average temperature in spring is 56 °F. Of the inhabitants 95 per cent were Slovenes, kinsmen to the Croats. In the districts of Gottschee and Črnomelj dwell the people of White Carniola for a connecting link between the Croats and Slovenes. One-half of the Germans live in Gottschee, 5,000 in Ljubljana, 3,500 at Novo Mesto, 1,000 at Radovljica; the Germans at Gottschee were settled there by Otho, Count of Ortenburg, in the fourteenth century, they preserve their Tyrolean German dialect. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Lombards settled in Carniola, followed by Slavs around the sixth century AD; as a part of the Holy Roman Empire, the area was successively ruled by Bavarian and local nobility, by the Austrian Habsburgs continuously from 1335 to 1918, though beset by many raids from the Ottomans and rebellions by local residents against Habsburg rule from the 15th to the 17th centuries.
From about 900 AD until the 20th century, Carniola's ruling classes and urban areas spoke German, while the peasantry spoke Slovene. The capital of Carniola situated at Kranj, was moved to Kamnik and to the current capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana. Sixth century – Slovene settlements. Eighth century – Carniola a part of the Empire of Charlemagne. 10th century – Carniola a separate country. 1278 – Death of Ottokar II of Bohemia. Carniola absorbed in the Habsburg dominions. 14th century – The province under Albert III. 15th–16th centuries – Ravages of the Ottomans. 1527–1564 – Progress of the Reformation in Carniola. 1564 – Death of Ferdinand I. Carniola under the Archduke Charles. Religious persecutions begin. 1763 – Political administration of "Inner Austria" centralized at Graz. 1790 – Accession of Leopold II. Partial revival of autonomy. 1797 – First French invasion. 1805 – Second French invasion. 1809 – Treaty of Schönbrunn. Carniola under French rule. 1814 – Congress of Vienna. Carniola restored to Austria.
Before the coming of the Romans, the Taurisci dwelt in the north of Carniola, the Pannonians in the southeast, the Iapodes or Carni, a Celtic tribe, in the southwest. Carniola formed part of the Roman province of Pannonia. In the time of Augustus all the region from Aemona to the Kolpa river belonged to the province of Savia. After the fall of the Western Roman Emp
Predil Pass
The Predil Pass or Predel Pass is a high mountain pass on the border between Italy and Slovenia. The pass is located in the Julian Alps, between the peaks of Mount Mangart to the north and Mount Kanin to the south, it connects Cave del Predil, part of the Italian municipality of Tarvisio in the northwest, with the municipality of Bovec in the Upper Soča Valley in Slovenia. On the Italian side, the state highway No. 54 del Friuli leads from Tarvisio and the Canal Valley along the Slizza Creek to Lake Predil, where the route to the Sella Nevea Pass in the south branches off, uphill to the Predil crest. On the Slovenian side, the road No. 203 runs further to Bovec. The village of Strmec na Predelu lies just beneath the border crossing; the road was built from 1319 onwards by the citizens of Cividale in the Patriarchate of Aquileia with the consent of the Prince-Bishops of Bamberg the possessors of the Carinthian lands in the north. However, the importance of the trade route diminished after the Aquileia territory in the south was incorporated into the Domini di Terraferma by the Republic of Venice in 1420.
Since 1754 the Predil Pass marked the border between the Duchy of Carinthia with the lands of the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca in the southeast, both part of the Habsburg Monarchy. During the War of the Fifth Coalition, an Austrian contingent under Captain Johann Hermann von Hermannsdorf on 18 May 1809 fought against the French forces moving from the Kingdom of Italy upon the Battle of Tarvis. Hermannsdorf was killed in 1851 a memorial was erected in his honour. In 1903 a 4.5 km long tunnel was built beneath the pass, serving miners from Log pod Mangartom on their way to the lead mines in Cave del Predil. In World War I the mine railway was used to supply the Austro-Hungarian Army in the Battles of the Isonzo against the Kingdom of Italy. List of highest paved roads in Europe List of mountain passes Media related to Predil Pass at Wikimedia Commons
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization. Ruled by emperors, it had large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus. From the constitutional reforms of Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, the Empire was a principate ruled from the city of Rome; the Roman Empire was ruled by multiple emperors and divided in a Western Roman Empire, based in Milan and Ravenna, an Eastern Roman Empire, based in Nicomedia and Constantinople. Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus after capturing Ravenna and the Roman Senate sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople; the fall of the Western Roman Empire to barbarian kings, along with the hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire, is conventionally used to mark the end of Ancient Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The previous Republic, which had replaced Rome's monarchy in the 6th century BC, became destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflict.
In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar was appointed as perpetual dictator and assassinated in 44 BC. Civil wars and proscriptions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesar's adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC; the following year Octavian conquered Ptolemaic Egypt, ending the Hellenistic period that had begun with the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon in the 4th century BC. Octavian's power was unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power and the new title Augustus making him the first emperor; the first two centuries of the Empire were a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. It reached its greatest territorial expanse during the reign of Trajan. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus. In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a crisis that threatened its existence, but was reunified under Aurelian. In an effort to stabilize the Empire, Diocletian set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West.
Christians rose to power in the 4th century following the Edict of Milan in 313 and the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. Shortly after, the Migration Period involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and the Huns of Attila led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD by Odoacer, the Western Roman Empire collapsed and it was formally abolished by emperor Zeno in 480 AD; the Eastern Roman Empire, known in the post-Roman West as the Byzantine Empire, collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II in 1453. Due to the Roman Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, architecture, philosophy and forms of government in the territory it governed Europe; the Latin language of the Romans evolved into the Romance languages of the medieval and modern world, while Medieval Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Its adoption of Christianity led to the formation of Christendom during the Middle Ages. Greek and Roman art had a profound impact on the late medieval Italian Renaissance, while Rome's republican institutions influenced the political development of republics such as the United States and France; the corpus of Roman law has its descendants in many legal systems of the world today, such as the Napoleonic Code. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Neoclassical architecture. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian peninsula until the 3rd century BC, it was an "empire" long before it had an emperor. The Roman Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of towns left to rule themselves and provinces administered by military commanders, it was ruled, not by annually elected magistrates in conjunction with the senate. For various reasons, the 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which led to rule by emperors.
The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium, which means "command". Successful consuls were given the honorary title imperator, this is the origin of the word emperor since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors upon their accession. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts and civil wars from the late second century BC onward, while extending its power beyond Italy; this was the period of the Crisis of the Roman Republic. Towards the end of this era, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was perpetual dictator before being assassinated; the faction of his assassins was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by an army led by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian's division of the Roman world between themselves did not last and Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, ending the Final War of the Roman Republic. In 27 BC the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian princeps ("first citi
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Tolmin
Tolmin is a small town in northwestern Slovenia. It is the administrative centre of the Municipality of Tolmin. Tolmin is situated on the southern rim of the Julian Alps, the largest settlement in the Upper Soča Valley, close to the border with Italy, it is located on a terrace above the confluence of the Soča and Tolminka rivers, positioned beneath steep mountainous valleys. The old town gave its name to the entire Tolmin area as its economic and administrative centre; the area is located in the historic Goriška region, itself part of the larger Slovene Littoral, about 41 km north of Nova Gorica and 87 km west of the Slovene capital Ljubljana. In the north, the road leads further up the Soča River to Bovec, with an eastern branch-off to Škofja Loka and Idrija. Early inhabitants were Illyrians in Tolmin area, it was ruled successively by the Roman Empire, the Ostrogoths, the Eastern Roman Empire and part of the Lombard Duchy of Friuli until it was conquered by the Frankish king Charlemagne in 774 and replaced by the Carolingian March of Friuli.
Ancestors of Slovenes had come to this area during the Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps from about 600 onwards, embattled by Avar raids. It was passed to Middle Francia in 843 after the Treaty of Verdun and in 952 passed to the vast March of Verona, ruled by the Dukes of Bavaria, from 976 by the Carinthian dukes. King Henry IV of Germany ceded it to the newly established Patria del Friuli in 1077, before it was occupied by the Republic of Venice in 1420; the Tolmin area was conquered by the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian I during the War of the League of Cambrai in 1509. Tolmin was ruled with the possessions of the extinct Counts of Gorizia as part of the Inner Austrian territories of the Habsburg Monarchy. In 1713 it was the centre of a peasant revolt against increased taxation and the local Count Coronini, it was part of the Illyrian Provinces, which were part of Napoleonic French Empire between 1809 and 1814 before returning to Austrian rule. Until 1918, the town was part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and head of the district of the same name, one of the 11 Bezirkshauptmannschaften in the Austrian Littoral province.
A post-office was opened in October 1850 under the German name. After World War I it was ruled by the Kingdom of Italy between 1918 and 1943, it was a county center in Province of Gorizia between 1918 and 1923 and again between 1927 and 1943 and in Province of Friuli between 1923 and 1927 during Italian rule as Tolmino. After the Italian caputilation, it was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1943 and was part of Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral before liberation by Yugoslav partisans. After temporary division of Julian March by Morgan Line, Tolmin was part of Zone-B, under Yugoslav administrators, it was passed from Italy to Yugoslavia in 1947 after the Treaty of Paris. Tolmin was passed to Slovenia after breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. Tolmin's main sights are its old town centre, a modern sports park, thousand-year-old castle ruins at the hill known as Kozlov rob; the area is home to a multitude of vestiges from World War I. The most significant relic of the time is the Javorca Church, dedicated to the Holy Spirit built above the Polog shepherds outpost in the Tolminka Valley by Austro-Hungarian soldiers to commemorate their deceased comrades.
The museum, library and the town’s open spaces provide venues for a variety of events and presentations all year round. The Tolmin region is a popular destination for artists from Slovenia and abroad; the parish church in the town is dedicated to the Assumption of Mary and belongs to the Diocese of Koper. Tolmin is known for the "Metalcamp" festival since 2004, which since 2013 is called Metaldays, which every year attracts about 10,000 people from whole Europe and other parts of world. Other festivals held in Tolmin are the Overjam reggae festival. Notable natives and residents of Tolmin include: Andrea Bresciani, illustrator Pino Bosi and historian Ivan Čargo, painter Jan Cvitkovič, film director Anton Haus, grand admiral of the Austro-Hungarian Navy Ciril Kosmač, writer Karel Lavrič, politician Giancarlo Movia, philosopher Ivan Pregelj, writer Albert Rejec and head of TIGR Jožko Šavli and historian Saša Vuga, writer Tolmin is twinned with: Vicchio, since 1981 Tolmin on Geopedia
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American journalist, short-story writer, noted sportsman. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, he published seven novels, six short-story collections, two non-fiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. Hemingway was raised in Illinois. After high school, he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star before leaving for the Italian Front to enlist as an ambulance driver in World War I. In 1918, he was wounded and returned home, his wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms. In 1921, he married Hadley Richardson.
The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published in 1926. After his 1927 divorce from Richardson, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer, he based For Whom the Bell Tolls on his experience there. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940, he was present at the liberation of Paris. Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was killed in two successive plane crashes that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway maintained permanent residences in Key West and Cuba. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, where, in mid-1961, he ended his own life. Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, his father, Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, was a physician, his mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, was a musician.
Both were well-educated and well-respected in Oak Park, a conservative community about which resident Frank Lloyd Wright said, "So many churches for so many good people to go to." For a short period after their marriage and Grace Hemingway lived with Grace's father, Ernest Hall, their first son's namesake. Ernest Hemingway would say that he disliked his name, which he "associated with the naive foolish hero of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest"; the family moved into a seven-bedroom home in a respectable neighborhood with a music studio for Grace and a medical office for Clarence. Hemingway's mother performed in concerts around the village; as an adult, Hemingway professed to hate his mother, although biographer Michael S. Reynolds points out that Hemingway mirrored her energy and enthusiasm, her insistence that he learn to play the cello became a "source of conflict", but he admitted the music lessons were useful to his writing, as is evident in the "contrapuntal structure" of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The family spent summers at Windemere near Petoskey, Michigan. Hemingway's father taught him to hunt and camp in the woods and lakes of Northern Michigan as a young boy; these early experiences in nature instilled a passion for outdoor adventure and living in remote or isolated areas. From 1913 until 1917, Hemingway attended River Forest High School, he took part in a number of sports such as boxing and field, water polo, football. He excelled in English classes, with his sister Marcelline, performed in the school orchestra for two years. During his junior year he had a journalism class, structured "as though the classroom were a newspaper office," with better writers submitting pieces to the school newspaper, The Trapeze. Hemingway and Marcelline both submitted pieces, he edited the Trapeze and the Tabula, imitating the language of sportswriters, taking the pen name Ring Lardner, Jr.—a nod to Ring Lardner of the Chicago Tribune whose byline was "Line O'Type."Like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist.
After leaving high school he went to work for The Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. Although he stayed there for only six months, he relied on the Star's style guide as a foundation for his writing: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative." Early in 1918, after applying to serve with, being turned down by, the US Army and Marines because of poor eyesight, Hemingway responded to a Red Cross recruitment effort in Kansas City and signed on to become an ambulance driver in Italy. He left New York in May and arrived in Paris as the city was under bombardment from German artillery. By June, he was at the Italian Front, it was around this time that he first met John Dos Passos, with whom he had a rocky relationship for decades. On his first day in Milan, he was sent to the scene of a munitions factory explosion, where rescuers retrieved the shredded remains of female workers, he described the incident in his non-fiction book Death in the Afternoon: "I remember that after we searched quite for the complete dead we collected fragments."
A few days he was stationed a
Noricum
Noricum is the Latin name for the Celtic kingdom or federation of tribes that included most of modern Austria and part of Slovenia. In the first century AD, it became a province of the Roman Empire, its borders were the Danube to the north and Vindelicia to the west, Pannonia to the east and southeast, Italia to the south. The kingdom was founded around 400 BC, had its capital at the royal residence at Virunum on the Magdalensberg. Around 800 BC, the region was inhabited by the people of the local Celtic Hallstatt culture. Around 450 BC, they merged with the people of the other core Celtic areas in the south-western regions of Germany and eastern France; the country is rich in iron and salt. It supplied material for the manufacturing of arms in Pannonia and northern Italy; the famous Noric steel was used in the making of Roman weapons. Gold and salt were found in considerable quantities; the plant called saliunca was used as a perfume according to Pliny the Elder. The Celtic inhabitants developed a culture rich in art, cattle breeding, salt mining and agriculture.
When part of the area became a Roman province, the Romans introduced water management and the vivid trade relations between the people north and south of the alps boosted - Noric steel was famous for its quality and hardness. Archaeological research in the cemeteries of Hallstatt, has shown that a vigorous Celtic civilization was in the area centuries before recorded history, but the Celtic Hallstatt civilization was a cultural manifestation prior to the other Celtic invasions, The Hallstatt graves contained weapons and ornaments from the Bronze Age, through the period of transition, up to the "Hallstatt culture", i.e. the developed older period of the Iron Age. The Noric language, a continental Celtic language, is attested in only fragmentary inscriptions, one from Ptuj and two from Grafenstein, neither of which provide enough information for any conclusions about the nature of the language; the kingdom of Noricum was a major provider of weaponry for the Roman armies from the mid-Republic onwards.
Roman swords were made of the best-quality steel available from this region, the chalybs Noricus. The strength of iron is determined by its carbon content; the wrought iron produced in the Greco-Roman world contained traces of carbon and was too soft for tools and weapons. It needed at least 1.5% carbon content. The Roman method of achieving this was to heat the wrought iron to a temperature of over 800 C and hammer it in a charcoal fire, causing the iron to absorb carbon from the charcoal; this technique developed empirically: there is no evidence ancient iron producers understood the chemistry. This rudimentary methods of carburisation made the quality of iron ore critical to the production of good steel; the ore needed to be rich in manganese, contain little or no phosphorus, which weakens steel. The ore mined in Carinthia fulfilled both criteria well; the Celts of Noricum discovered their ore made superior steel around 500 BC and built a major steel industry. At Magdalensberg, a major production and trading centre, specialised blacksmiths crafted metal products and weapons.
The finished arms were exported to Aquileia, a Roman colony founded in 180 BC. From 200 BC the Noricum tribes united into Celtic kingdom, known as the regnum Noricum, with its capital at a place called Noreia. Noricum became a key ally of the Roman Republic, providing high-quality weapons and tools in exchange for military protection; this was demonstrated in 113 BC. In response, the Roman consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo led an army over the Alps to attack the Germanic tribes at the Noreia. Noricum was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 16 BC. For a long time the Noricans had enjoyed independence under princes of their own and carried on commerce with the Romans. In 48 BC they took the side of Julius Caesar in the civil war against Pompey. In 16 BC, having joined with the Pannonians in invading Histria, they were defeated by Publius Silius, proconsul of Illyricum. Thereafter, Noricum was called a province, although it was not organized as such and remained a kingdom with the title of regnum Noricum, yet under the control of an imperial procurator.
Under the reign of Emperor Claudius the Noricum Kingdom was incorporated into the Roman Empire without offering resistance. It was not until the reign of Antoninus Pius that the Second Legion, Pia was stationed in Noricum, the commander of the legion became the governor of the province. Under Diocletian, Noricum was divided into Noricum ripense, Noricum mediterraneum; the dividing line ran along the central part of the eastern Alps. Each division was under a praeses, both belonged to the diocese of Illyricum in the Praetorian prefecture of Italy, it was in this time that a Christian serving as a military officer in the province suffered martyrdom for the sake of his faith canonised as Saint Florian. The Roman colonies and chief towns were Virunum, Flavia Solva, Celeia in today's Slovenia, Ovilava, Lauriacum. Knowledge of Roman Noricum has been decisively expanded by the
Slovenia
listen); Italian: Caporetto, Friulian: Cjaurêt, German: Karfreit) is a settlement in Slovenia, the administrative centre of the Municipality of Kobarid.
