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.
Location
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.
History of research
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. He attached a sketch to his report:
During the excavations we came to the conclusion that this could be the third fortress on the same site. Proof of this are the 15 walls found under the ground, two of which are shown in the drawing, 300 metres apart in parallel; one of the walls is between the fortress and the town hall and 150 metres from the fortress. The remaining 13 walls run in different directions. In particular, the latter wall attracted the attention of the archaeologist Pál Lakatos, as trees were not even allowed to be planted in this area, which belonged to the fortress's bombardment area, until the 19th century. Old plans proved that there never was a building there in the early modern period. But the strength of the two parallel walls, found at a depth of 5.70 to 7.60 metres, is extraordinarily strong at three metres for a Principate fort. In addition, a fort 300 metres wide that would almost reach the dimensions of a legionary camp would not be adjustable at this location. What these walls belonged to remains unknown without modern excavations. Rather, archaeologists such as Dénes Gabler suspect the Roman military station in the area of a castle palace of the Árpád period, which was located there before the construction of the great fortress at its southern fortification. In this area Roman floor tiles were also discovered in situ (see below). The small castle palace could have taken up structures of the fort. Since the presumed area at the corner of Vár Street and Deák-Ferenc Street is now covered by buildings, research has become impossible.
The area of the former Szeged fortress has not yet been systematically investigated. Due to the medieval, early modern and modern construction, no traces of the Roman fortification have survived above ground. The dense concentration of findings in this zone, however, indicates the location of the presumed fort. An alabastern relief fragment discovered in 1924 in the southern Szegedin district of Alsóváros could also have reached it in the post-Roman period.