lies....

The known history of Pola begins with the Roman conquest of Istria
in 178 B.C. The town became a Roman colony and a flourishing seat of
commerce. Its action on the republican side in the civil war brought
on it the vengeance of the second Cæsar. But the destroyer became
the restorer, and Pietas Julia, in the height of its greatness, far
surpassed the extent either of the elder or the younger Pola. Like all
cities of this region, Pola kept up its importance down to the days of
the Carlovingian Empire, the specially flourishing time of the whole
district being that of Gothic and Byzantine dominion at Ravenna. A
barbarian king, the Roxolan Rasparasanus, is said to have withdrawn to
Pola after the submission of his nation to Hadrian; and the panegyrists
of the Flavian house rank Pola along with Trier and Autun among the
cities which the princes of that house had adorned or strengthened. But
in the history of their dynasty the name of the city chiefly stands out
as the chosen place for the execution of princes whom it was convenient
to put out of the way.

Here Crispus died at the bidding of Constantine, and Gallus at the
bidding of Constantius. Under Theodoric, Pola doubtless shared that
general prosperity of the Istrian land on which Cassiodorus grows
eloquent when writing to its inhabitants. In the next generation Pola
appears in somewhat of the same character which has come back to it in
our own times; it was there that Belisarius gathered the Imperial fleet
for his second and less prosperous expedition against the Gothic lords
of Italy. But, after the break up of the Frankish Empire, the history of
medieval Pola is but a history of decline. It was, in the geography of
Dante, the furthest city of Italy; but, like most of the other cities of
its own neighborhood, its day of greatness had passed away when Dante