Hispania Tarraconensis

The largest province in the empire for most of its history, and a deliberate piece of gerrymandering. Augustus created it in 27 BC by taking the old Hispania Citerior and adding everything Rome had just finished conquering in the north and northwest, producing a territory covering roughly two thirds of the Iberian peninsula. The point was military: the unpacified Cantabrian and Asturian country needed legions, and attaching it to a large imperial province kept those legions under the emperor's direct command rather than the Senate's. Tarraco, on the Catalan coast, was the capital, and its Roman monuments are a World Heritage site. The province held the gold, and the northwest was mined on a scale not matched anywhere before the industrial era - at Las Medulas whole hillsides were collapsed by driving water through tunnels, a technique Pliny described after serving as procurator in the region. The output funded the imperial coinage for generations. The garrison was steadily reduced as the north quietened, until a single legion, VII Gemina, remained; the town that grew around its camp is now Leon. Tarraconensis produced Quintilian, Martial and the emperor Theodosius. Diocletian broke the province up at the end of the third century, carving out Gallaecia and Carthaginiensis. Its road system converged on Tarraco and Caesaraugusta, the modern Zaragoza. Latin spread unevenly and Basque survived in the western Pyrenees, the only pre-Roman language in the peninsula that did. The province covered around 380 thousand square kilometres. Its provincial assembly met at Tarraco and voted honours to emperors. Asturian gold output has been estimated in the tonnes per year at its peak.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history