Hispania

Hispania is the Roman name for the Iberian peninsula, whose peoples had been forming distinct societies since around 800 BC: Iberians along the Mediterranean coast, literate and urbanised through contact with Phoenician and Greek traders; Celts and Celtiberians in the interior meseta, organised around hillforts and warrior clientage; and Lusitanians in the west. Tartessos in the south-west, rich on silver and tin, was wealthy enough to enter Greek legend before disappearing. Carthage took the south and east after losing Sicily, and it was from Cartagena that Hannibal marched on Italy - which is why Rome came, landing in 218 BC to cut his supply rather than to acquire a province. What followed was the longest conquest in Roman history: two hundred years, against opponents with no single centre to capture. Viriathus held the Lusitanians together for eight years of guerrilla war until Rome had him murdered by his own envoys. Numantia held out until 133 BC and its people burned the town and themselves rather than surrender, which became the founding story of Spanish resistance. Sertorius, a Roman rebel, ran a rival senate here for eight years. The peninsula was only fully subdued when Augustus finished the Cantabrian Wars in 19 BC, at which point it was reorganised into three provinces and became one of the most thoroughly Romanised parts of the empire, supplying olive oil, silver, soldiers, the poets Martial and Lucan, and the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. Its mines at Rio Tinto and Las Medulas were worked on an industrial scale, the latter by hydraulic quarrying that removed an entire mountain. Roman Spain also produced Seneca, Quintilian and Columella. The three provinces of Augustus - Baetica, Lusitania and Tarraconensis - are the ancestors of Andalusia, Portugal and the Spanish north.

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