Ebora Liberalitas Julia

Ebora Liberalitas Julia is the name of the Roman municipium that gave rise to the Portuguese district capital of Evora in the Alentejo region. The name Ebora points to an earlier Celtiberian hilltop fortification in or near the area, though the first archaeological evidence of settlement dates only to the early Roman Empire, since Roman control of the Alentejo probably did not begin until the middle of the second century BC. The added name Iulia suggests the municipium emerged under the Julian family and Gaius Julius Caesar, but because clear traces of infrastructure from that period are missing, scholars consider it more likely that Evora became a municipium after the Pax Romana, under Octavian, around 30 BC. Read in that context, the added name Liberalitas Iulia signals peace. The first surviving reference to Evora as a municipium appears in a list of cities in Hispania in Pliny the Elder Natural History, dated to 77 AD.