Gorsivm-Hercvlia-Tác [antikvár]

Halfway between Budapest and Lake Balaton lies the town of Székesfehérvár, now a flourishing provincial town, once the coronation and burial place of Hungarian kings. Yet long before it was founded in the eleventh century, reaching back into the mists of time, nothing but a few settlements of primitive man, of minor importance, could be found in the general vicinity. From the second half of the Bronze Age thick walls of the centre of the region rose on the heights of neighbouring Pákozdvár. The Celts who inhabited the country as a rule founded their tiny village settlements along the banks of little rivers, or on the shores of small lakes. Neither Fehérvár nor the neighbouring village of Tác were of any importance at that time. The region emerged from obscurity when the dual influences of trade and military strategy simultaneously began to make themselves felt. The roads leading south and south-west had been determined from early days by the fords which crossed the northern and eastern reaches of the Danube and by the wind-blown ridges of the chains of hills and the river valleys running south-easterly by the waters of Lake Balaton and Lake Velence, stretching from the south-west to the north-east. Within this area the natural focus of traffic has always been in the region of Székesfehérvár. It was due to historical circumstances that the roads running from the four quarters of the earth converged at Gorsium, at the ford of the river Sárvíz or on the islands of Gaja protected by marshes, where Alba Regia or, later, Székesfehérvár rose later on. The fate of this ancient town, now again alive after the Middle Ages-though the social and historical conditions were utterly different-has been consistently the same in the unchanging role it has played.Gorsium was founded by the conquering Romans. The Celtic Eravisci who inhabited the neighbourhood very early became de-pendenton the Empire, dating back to the time when the Emperor Augustus finally consolidated the power of Rome south of the river Drava. Later, for almost half a century, they lived their own life among the gently sloping hills, and for a while continued to do so even after Roman troops, in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, made their appearance on the roads already worn and rutted by the wagons of travelling merchants, and pitched their camps on certain sites. One of the auxiliary units was quartered north of the Gellért Hill, now in the centre of Budapest, near the tribal centre of the native Eravisci, a Danube ford, another on the