Zurobara


Zurobara was a Dacian town located in today's Banat region in Romania. It is positioned by the Tibiscus river, north of Zarmizegethusa Regia and south of Ziridava. It was near the Tisza river, in the area of the Dacian tribe of Biephi.
This town was attested by Ptolemy in his Geographia, yet its exact location remains unknown. Zurobara is amongst the places, which are not to be found on the great Roman roads between the Tysis and the Aluta,

Ancient sources

Ptolemy's Geographia

Zurobara is mentioned in Ptolemy's Geographia in the form Ζουρόβαρα as an important town in western Dacia, at latitude 45° 40' N and longitude 45° 40' E. Ptolemy completed his work soon after Trajan's Dacian Wars, as a result of which parts of Dacia were incorporated into the Roman Empire as the new Dacia province.

Tabula Peutingeriana

Unlike many other Dacian towns mentioned by Ptolemy, Zurobara is missing from Tabula Peutingeriana, an itinerarium showing the cursus publicus, the road network in the Roman Empire.
The Danish philologist and historian Gudmund Schütte believed that the town with similar name Ziridava, also mentioned by Ptolemy and also missing from Tabula Peutingeriana, was the same with Zurobara. This idea is deemed erroneous alongside many other assumed duplications of names, by the Romanian historian and archaeologist Vasile Pârvan in his work Getica. Pârvan reviewed all localities mentioned in Ptolemy's Geographia, analyzing and verifying all data available to him at the time. He points out that Ziri and Zuro are the roots of two different Geto-Dacian words. Additionally, Ptolemy provided different coordinates for the two towns, some medieval maps created based on his Geographia depict two distinct towns.

Etymology

Zurobara name was interpreted initially as "strong city" where: the ending term of name "bara" / "vara" means ‘city’ and the first term of the name "Zuro" means ‘strong’. Zuro ‘strong’ is also found in the name of Zyraxes, a Dacian king,.
Because of Proto-Indo-European "e" > Dacian "a", bara is rather derived from root *bher ‘rich, abundance’ and zura from root *ser, *sara ‘waters, river'. In this case, Zurobara meant ‘a waters abundance city’.

Ancient

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