The history of Valencia, one of the oldest cities in Spain, begins over 2100 years ago with its founding as a Roman colony under the name "Valentia Edetanorum" on the site of a former Iberian town, by the river Turia in the province of Edetania. The Roman consul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus transferred about 2,000 veteran soldiers who had fought under him to Valentia in 138 BC. Valentia lay in a strategic location near the sea on a river island that would later be crossed by the Via Augusta. Pompey razed Valentia to the ground in 75 BC; it was rebuilt about fifty years later with large infrastructure projects, and by the mid-1st century, was experiencing rapid urban growth with many colonists from Italy.