Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Knowing that the island warriors were capable of slinging heavy stones at his ships' wa-
terline and sinking them, he had come up with a novel idea. Using heavy skins and leath-
er, he effectively invented the first armoured vessels. Stunned by their incapacity to in-
flict serious damage, the Mallorquin warriors fled inland before the advance of Metelus'
men. Within two years the island had been pacified.
Metelus had 3000 settlers brought over from mainland Iberia and founded two military
camps in the usual Roman style (with the intersecting main streets of the
decumanus
and
cardus maximus
). Known as Palmeria or Palma and Pol·lentia, they soon developed into
Mallorca's main towns. Pol·lentia, neatly situated between the two northeast bays of Pol-
lença and Alcúdia, was the senior of the two.
At the same time as Pol·lentia was embellished with fine buildings, temples, a theatre
and more (Pol·lentia has Mallorca's most extensive Roman remains), some Roman cit-
izens opted for the rural life and built grand country villas. Nothing remains today but it
is tempting to see them as the precursor to the Arab
alqueries
(farmsteads) and Mallor-
can
possessions
(country estates).
The indigenous population slowly adopted the Roman language and customs but con-
tinued to live in its own villages. Plinius the Elder reported that Mallorcan wine was as
good as in Italy, and the island's wheat and snails were also appreciated.
For a comprehensive history of the ancient, pre-Roman world in Mallorca, Spanish read-
ers should look no further than
Guía Arqueológica de Mallorca,
by Javier Arambau, Car-
los Garrido and Vicenç Sastre.
Archaeological evidence, such as the remains of the 5th-century early-Christian ba-
silica at Son Peretó, shows that Christianity had arrived in the island by the 4th century
AD. By then storm clouds were gathering, and in the 5th century they broke as barbarian
tribes launched assaults on the Roman Empire. The Balearic Islands felt the scourge of
the Vandals (an East Germanic tribe that plundered their way into Roman territory) in
426. Forty years later, having crashed across Spain to establish their base in North
Africa, they returned to take the islands.
The Vandals got their comeuppance when Byzantine Emperor Justinian decided to try
to rebuild the Roman Empire. His tireless general, Belisarius, vanquished the Vandals in
North Africa in 533 and the following year took the Balearic Islands. After Justinian's
death in 565, Byzantine control over territories in the western Mediterranean quickly
waned. By the time the Muslims swept across North Africa in the first years of the 8th
century, the Balearic Islands were an independent Christian enclave.
