Partiscum (castra)

Partiscum was a fort in the Roman province of Dacia along the limes of Marisus river. It is the most Western fort of Dacia. Its ruins are located nearby Szeged, Csongrád-Csanád County, Hungary. Latest research showed that the most likely place was in Szeged, near the Tisza river, at the old Castle of Szeged. In prehistory, the area was the territory of the Iazyges (or Jazygei), a subgroup of Sarmatians. The Roman fort, first mentioned as Partiscum by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century A.D., lies in southern Hungary and in the southern part of the Great Hungarian Plain on the lower reaches of the Tisza River, which flows into the Danube about 120 kilometres south into Serbia/Vojvodina. At the eastern city border the Maros (Latin Marisus, Romanian Mureș) flows into the Tisza. The Maros forms here also the natural border to Romania. The Roman ruins are today covered by the city centre. In antiquity, an important traffic connection coming from the west led to Partiscum and further over the Marosch Valley to inner Dacia. The road connection started from castra Lugio/Florentia. This garrison, together with fortified naval area of late antiquity Burgus contra Florentiam, guarded the Pannonian Danube Limes and the border area around the road meeting the Roman Empire here. Traces of Roman settlements could be uncovered in particular on the western bank of the Tisza River under the fortress erected in the Middle Ages. During the demolition of the Szeged fortress, last restored under Empress and Queen Maria Theresia, between 1876 and 1883 a large number of Spoli came to light, a small part of which was of Roman origin. The Spolia, which was discovered by the ethnographer Cs. Sebestyén Károly (1876-1956) first published find material is not explicitly of military origin and thus only testifies to a Roman settlement. However, during the construction of a canal for the municipal sewerage system in 1877, the engineer responsible, István Kováts, may have cut the walls of the presumed castle on the site of the fortress.