History

In addressing the issue of the spread of Christianity in the Venetian lands and the organization of the Church, it is not possible to ignore the civil organization that the Roman domination had impressed on the territory. The Romanization of the eastern Cisalpine territory began from the beginning of the second century. BC In the year 181 the Romans, on the site of a previous settlement center, founded the colony of Aquileia as a fortified place for the purpose of defense of the local populations from the hordes of roosters who in 186 had descended into the Po valley. A kind of protectorate began which would slowly absorb the territory into the dominions of Rome. In order to facilitate land connections with the new colony and to establish their control over the territory, the Romans created a well-organized road network. In 175 BC the consul Marco Emilio Lepido traced the first important communication route, which connected Bologna to Aquileia. The new route allowed for rapid transit of military contingents in the border colony. The "via Postumia", named after the consul Spurius Postumio Albino who marked the route in 148 BC, started from Aquileia to reach Genoa. The construction of the "via Annia" which started from Adria, passed through Padua and reached Aquileia was also in those years. To the dense network of land connections was added a capillary work of organization and division of the territory through the centuriation, in order to distribute land to veterans and improve agricultural exploitation. Alongside the reorganization of the territory, during the first century. BC a restructuring of the main urban centers was carried out which took on the appearance of Roman cities;
to this work corresponded the granting of Roman citizenship and therefore the introduction of specific Roman magistracies. It was in the year 49 BC that the lex Roscia granted Roman citizenship to the Cisalpine territories and therefore the cities assumed the role of municipalities. When the emperor Augustus took the decision to organize Italy into eleven regions, the territories of the eastern Cisalpina formed the X Regio. The borders of the region were marked by the chain of the Alps to the north, the course of the Po to the south, the Oglio river to the west and the Arsia river to the east;
the X Regio thus included the Istrian peninsula, the present regions of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige and eastern Lombardy.