Osca
Ὄσκα
Osca
1.
(Ὄσκα, Ptol. 2.6.68), a town of the Ilergetes in the N. of Hispania Tarraconensis, on the road from. Tarraco and Ilerda to Caesaraugusta (Itin. Ant. pp. 391, 451), and under the jurisdiction of the last-named city. Pliny alone (3.3. s. 4) places the Oscenses in Vescitania. a district mentioned nowhere else. It was a Roman colony, and had a mint. We learn from Plutarch (Plut. Sert. 100.14) that it was a large town, and the place where Sertorius died. It is probably the town called Ileoscan (Ἰλεόσκαν) by Strabo, in an apparently corrupt passage (iii. p. 161; v. Ukert, vol. ii. pt. 1. p. 451.) It seems to have possessed silver mines (Liv. 34.10, 46, 40.43), unless the argentum Oscense
here mentioned merely refers to the minted silver of the town. Florez, however (Med. 2.520), has pointed out the impossibility of one place sup. plying such vast quantities of minted silver as we find recorded in ancient writers under the terms argentum Oscense,
signatum Oscense.;
and is of opinion that Oscense in these phrases means Spanish, by a corruption from the, national name, Eus-cara. (Cf. Caes. B.C. 1.60; Vell. 2.30.) It is the modern Huesca in Arragon. (Florez, Med. ii. p. 513; Sestini, p. 176; Mionnet, i. p. 46, Suppl. i. p. 9.2; Murray's Handbook of Spain, p. 448.)
2.
A town of the Turdetani in Hispania Baetica, which some have identified with Huescar, but which Ukert (vol. ii. pt. 1. p. 370) thinks must be. sought to. the W. of that place. (Ptol. 2.4.12; Plin. Nat. 2.1. s. 3.) The pretended coins, of this town are not genuine. (Florez, Med. l. e,; Sestini, p. 78; Mionnet, i. p. 43, Suppl. i. p. 40; Sestini, p. 78; Ukert, l.c.) [T.H.D]:
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.