SPAIN.
[Sidenote: Conclusion of the conquest.]
The accidents of external policy caused the Romans to establish
themselves on the Pyrenaean peninsula earlier than in any other part of
the transmarine mainland, and to institute there two standing commands.
There, too, the republic had not, as in Gaul and Illyricum, confined
itself to subduing the coasts of the Italian sea, but had rather from
the outset, after the precedent of the Barcides, contemplated the
conquest of the whole peninsula. With the Lusitanians (in Portugal
and Estremadura) the Romans had fought from the time that they called
themselves masters of Spain; the "more remote province" had been
instituted, strictly speaking, against these tribes and simultaneously
with the "nearer" one; the Callaeci (Gallicia) became subject to the
Romans a century before the battle of Actium; shortly before that
battle the subsequent dictator Caesar had, in his first campaign,
carried the Roman arms as far as Brigantium (Corunna), and consolidated
afresh the annexation of this region to the more remote province. Then,
in the years between the death of Caesar and the sole rule of Augustus,
there was unceasing warfare in the north of Spain; no fewer than six
governors in this short time won triumphs there, and perhaps the
subjugation of the northern slope of the Pyrenees was effected chiefly
in this epoch.[24] The wars with the cognate Aquitanians on the north
side of the mountains, which fall within the same epoch, and the last
of which was victoriously ended in the year 727 { 27.}, must stand in
connection with these events. On the reorganising of the administrative
arrangements in 727 {27.} the peninsula went to Augustus, because
there was a prospect of extensive military operations there, and it
needed a permanent garrison. Although the southern third of the more
remote province, thenceforth named from the river Baetis (Guadalquivir)
was soon given back to the government of the senate,[25] by far the
greater portion of the peninsula remained constantly under imperial
administration, including the greater part of the more remote province,
Lusitania and Callaecia,[26] and the whole of the large nearer one.
Immediately after the institution of the new supreme control Augustus
resorted in person to Spain, with a view, in his two years' stay (728,
729) {26, 25.}, to organise the new administration, and to direct the
occupation of the portions of the country not yet subject. This he did
from Tarraco as his headquarters, and it was at that time that the seat
of government of the nearer province was transferred from New Carthage
to Tarraco, after which town this province is thenceforth usually
named. While it appeared necessary on the one hand not to remove the
seat of administration from the coast, the new capital on the other
hand commanded the region of the Ebro and the communications with the
north-west and the Pyrenees. Against the Astures (in the provinces of
Asturias and Leon), and above all, the Cantabri (in the Basque country
and the province of Santander), who obstinately held out in these
mountains and overran the neighbouring cantons, a warfare attended by
difficulties and heavy losses was prolonged--with interruptions, which
the Romans called victories--for eight years, till at length Agrippa
succeeded in breaking down the open resistance by destroying the
mountain towns and transplanting their inhabitants to the valleys.
[Sidenote: Military organisation in the North-west.]
If, as the emperor Augustus says, from his time the coast of the
ocean from Cadiz to the mouth of the Elbe obeyed the Romans, the
obedience in this corner of it was far from voluntary and little to
be trusted. Matters were still apparently far from having reached a
proper pacification in north-western Spain. There is still mention
in Nero's time of war-expeditions against the Asturians. A still
clearer tale is told by the occupation of the country, as Augustus
arranged it. Callaecia was separated from Lusitania and united with
the Tarraconensian province, to concentrate in one hand the chief
command in northern Spain. Not merely was this province then the
only one which, without bordering on an enemy's country, obtained a
legionary military command, but no fewer than three legions[27] were
directed thither by Augustus--two to Asturia, one to Cantabria; and,
in spite of the military pressure in Germany and in Illyricum, this
occupying force was not diminished. The headquarters were established
between the old metropolis of Asturia, Lancia, and the new Asturica
Augusta (Astorga) in Leon that still at present bears its name. With
this strong occupation of the north-west is probably connected the
construction of roads undertaken there to a considerable extent in
the earlier imperial period, although we are not able to demonstrate
the connection in detail, seeing that the allocation of these troops
in the Augustan age is unknown to us. Thus there was established by
Augustus and Tiberius for the capital of Collaecia, Bracara (Braga),
a connection with Asturica, that is, with the great headquarters, and
not less with the neighbouring towns to the north, north-east, and
south. Tiberius made similar constructions in the territory of the
Vascones and in Cantabria.[28] Gradually the occupying force could be
diminished, and under Claudius one legion, under Nero a second, could
be employed elsewhere. But these were regarded only as drafted off, and
still at the beginning of the reign of Vespasian the Spanish garrison
had resumed its earlier strength; it was reduced, in the strict sense,
only by the Flavian emperors, by Vespasian to two, by Domitian to one
legion. From thence down to the time of Diocletian a single legion,
the Seventh Gemina, and a certain number of auxiliary contingents
garrisoned Leon.
No province under the monarchy was less affected by outward or by
inward wars than this land of the far west. While at this epoch the
commanderships of the troops assumed, as it were, the positions of
competing parties, the Spanish army played throughout a secondary part
in that respect; it was only as helper of his colleague that Galba
entered into the civil war, and mere accident carried him to the first
place. The force holding the north-west of the Peninsula, which even
after its reduction still strikes us as comparatively strong, leads
us to infer that this region had not been completely obedient even in
the second and third centuries; but we are unable to state anything
definite as to the employment of the Spanish legion within the province
which it held in occupation. The struggle against the Cantabrians had
been waged with the help of vessels of war; subsequently the Romans had
no occasion to institute a permanent naval station there. It is not
till the period after Diocletian that we find the Pyrenaean peninsula,
like the Italian and the Graeco-Macedonian, without a standing garrison.
[Sidenote: Incursions of the Moors.]
That the province of Baetica was, at least after the beginning of the
second century, visited on various occasions from the opposite coast
by the Moors--the pirates of Rîf--we shall have to set forth in detail
when we survey the affairs of Africa. We may presume that this serves
to explain why, although in the senatorial provinces elsewhere imperial
troops were not wont to be stationed, by way of exception Italica (near
Seville) was provided with a division of the legion of Leon.[29] But
it chiefly devolved on the command stationed in the province of Tingi
(Tangier) to protect the rich south of Spain from these incursions.
Still it happened that towns like Italica and Singili (not far from
Antequera) were besieged by the pirates.
[Sidenote: Introduction of Italian municipal law.]
If preparation was anywhere made by the republic for the great
all-significant work of the imperial period--the Romanising of the
West--it was in Spain. Peaceful intercourse carried forward what
the sword had begun; Roman silver money was paramount in Spain long
before it circulated elsewhere outside of Italy; and the mines, the
culture of the vine and olive, and the relations of traffic produced
a constant influx of Italian elements to the coast, particularly in
the south-west. New Carthage, the creation of the Barcides, and from
its origin down to the Augustan age the capital of the Hither province
and the first trading port of Spain, embraced already in the seventh
century a numerous Roman population; Carteia, opposite to the present
Gibraltar, founded a generation before the age of the Gracchi, was the
first transmarine civic community with a population of Roman origin
(iii. 4) {iii. 4.}; the old and renowned sister-town of Carthage,
Gades, the modern Cadiz, was the first foreign town out of Italy,
that adopted Roman law and Roman language (iv. 573) {iv. 543.}. While
thus along the greatest part of the coast of the Mediterranean the
old indigenous as well as the Phoenician civilisation had already,
under the republic, conformed to the ways and habits of the ruling
people, in no province under the imperial period was Romanising so
energetically promoted on the part of the ruling power as in Spain.
First of all the southern half of Baetica, between the Baetis and the
Mediterranean, obtained, partly already under the republic or through
Caesar, partly in the years 739 and 740 {15 and 14.} through Augustus,
a stately series of communities with full Roman citizenship, which here
occupy not the coast especially, but above all the interior, headed
by Hispalis (Seville) and Corduba (Cordova) with colonial rights,
Italica (near Seville) and Gades (Cadiz) with municipal rights. In
southern Lusitania, too, we meet with a series of equally privileged
towns, particularly Olisipo (Lisbon), Pax Julia (Beja), and the colony
of veterans founded by Augustus during his abode in Spain and made
the capital of this province, Emerita (Merida). In the Tarraconensis
the burgess-towns are found predominantly on the coast--Carthago
Nova, Ilici (Elche), Valentia, Dertosa (Tortosa), Tarraco, Barcino
(Barcelona); in the interior only the colony in the Ebro valley,
Caesaraugusta (Saragossa), is conspicuous. In all Spain under Augustus
there were numbered fifty communities with full citizenship; nearly
fifty others had up to this time received Latin rights, and stood as
to inward organisation on a par with the burgess-communities. Among
the rest the emperor Vespasian likewise introduced the Latin municipal
organisation on occasion of the general imperial census instituted by
him in the year 74. The bestowal of burgess-rights was neither then,
nor generally in the better imperial period, extended much further than
it had been carried in the time of Augustus;[30] as to which probably
the chief regulative consideration was the restricted right of levy in
regard to those who were citizens of the empire.
[Sidenote: Romanising of the Iberians.]
The indigenous population of Spain, which thus became partly mixed up
with Italian settlers, partly led towards Italian habits and language,
nowhere emerges so as to be clearly recognised in the history of the
imperial period. Probably that stock, whose remains and whose language
maintain their ground up to the present day in the mountains of Biscay,
Guipuscoa, and Navarre, once filled the whole peninsula, as the Berbers
filled the region of north Africa. Their language, different from the
Indo-Germanic, and destitute of flexion like that of the Finns and
Mongols, proves their original independence; and their most important
memorials, the coins, in the first century of the Roman rule in Spain
embrace the peninsula, with the exception of the south coast from Cadiz
to Granada, where the Phoenician language then prevailed, and of the
region northward of the mouth of the Tagus and westward of the sources
of the Ebro, which was then probably to a large extent practically
independent, and certainly was utterly uncivilised. In this Iberian
territory the south-Spanish writing is clearly distinguished from
that of the north province; but not less clearly both are branches of
one stock. The Phoenician immigration here confined itself to still
narrower bounds than in Africa, and the Celtic mixture did not modify
the general uniformity of the national development in a way that we
can recognise. But the conflicts of the Romans with the Iberians belong
mainly to the republican epoch, and have been formerly described (ii.
221 f.) {ii. 209 f.}. After the already mentioned last passages of arms
under the first dynasty, the Iberians vanish wholly out of sight. To
the question, how far they became Romanised in the imperial period,
the information that has come to us gives no satisfactory answer. That
in the intercourse with their former masters they would have always
occasion to make use of the Roman language, needs no proof; but under
the influence of Rome the national language and the national writing
disappear even from public use within their own communities. Already in
the last century of the republic the native coinage, which at first was
to a large extent allowed, had become in the main set aside; from the
imperial period there is no Spanish civic coin with other than a Latin
legend.[31]
[Sidenote: Language.]
Like the Roman dress, the Roman language was largely diffused even
among those Spaniards who had not Italian burgess-rights, and the
government favoured the _de facto_ Romanising of the land.[32] When
Augustus died the Roman language and habits prevailed in Andalusia,
Granada, Murcia, Valencia, Catalonia, Aragon; and a good part of this
is to be accounted for not by colonising but by Romanising. By the
ordinance of Vespasian previously mentioned the native language was
restricted _de jure_ to private intercourse. That it held its ground
in this, is proved by its existence at the present day; what is now
confined to the mountains, which neither the Goths nor the Arabs ever
occupied, must in the Roman period certainly have extended over a great
part of Spain, especially the north-west. Nevertheless Romanising
certainly set in very much earlier and more strongly in Spain than in
Africa; monuments with native writing from the imperial period can be
pointed to in Africa in fair number, hardly at all in Spain; and the
Berber language at present still prevails over half of north Africa,
the Iberian only in the narrow valleys of the Basques. It could not
be otherwise, partly because in Spain Roman civilisation emerged much
earlier and much more vigorously than in Africa, partly because the
natives had not in the former as in the latter the free tribes to fall
back upon.
[Sidenote: The Spanish community.]
The native communal constitution of the Iberians was not perceptibly
to our view different from the Gallic. From the first Spain, like
the Celtic country on either side of the Alps, was broken up into
cantonal districts; the Vaccaei and the Cantabri were hardly in any
essential respect distinguished from the Cenomani of the Transpadana
and the Remi of Belgica. The fact that on the Spanish coins struck in
the earlier epoch of the Roman rule it is predominantly not the towns
that are named, but the cantons,--not Tarraco but the Cassetani, not
Saguntum but the Arsenses--shows, still more clearly than the history
of the wars of the time, that in Spain too there once subsisted larger
cantonal unions. But the conquering Romans did not treat these unions
everywhere in like fashion. The Transalpine cantons remained even
under Roman rule political commonwealths; the Spanish were, like the
Cisalpine, simply geographical conceptions. As the district of the
Cenomani is nothing but a collective expression for the territories of
Brixia, Bergomum, and so forth, so the Asturians consist of twenty-two
politically independent communities, which to all appearance do
not legally concern each other more than the towns of Brixia and
Bergomum.[33] Of these communities the Tarraconensian province numbered
in the Augustan age 293, in the middle of the second century 275. Here,
therefore, the old canton-unions were broken up. This course was hardly
determined by the consideration that the compactness of the Vettones
and the Cantabri seemed more hazardous for the unity of the empire
than that of the Sequani and the Treveri; the distinction doubtless
was chiefly based on the diversity of the time and of the form of
conquest. The region on the Guadalquivir became Roman a century and a
half earlier than the banks of the Loire and the Seine; the time when
the foundation of the Spanish organisation was laid was not so very far
from the epoch at which the Samnite confederacy was dissolved. There
the spirit of the old republic prevailed; in Gaul the freer and gentler
view of Caesar. The smaller and powerless districts, which after the
dissolution of the unions became the pillars of political unity--the
small cantons or clans--became changed in course of time, here as
everywhere into towns. The beginnings of urban development, even
outside of the communities that attained Italian rights, go far back
into the republican, perhaps into the pre-Roman, time; subsequently
the general bestowal of Latin rights by Vespasian must have made this
conversion general or very nearly so.[34] In reality there were among
the 293 Augustan communities of the province of Tarraco 114, and among
the 275 of the second century only twenty-seven, that were not urban
communities.
[Sidenote: Levy.]
Of the position of Spain in the imperial administration little is to be
said. In the levy the Spanish provinces played a prominent part. The
legions doing garrison-duty there were probably from the beginning of
the principate raised chiefly in the country itself; when afterwards on
the one hand the occupying force was diminished, and on the other hand
the levy was more and more restricted to the garrison-district proper,
Baetica, sharing in this respect the lot of Italy, enjoyed the dubious
blessing of being totally excluded from military service. The auxiliary
levy, to which especially the districts that lagged behind as regards
urban development were subjected, was carried out on a great scale in
Lusitania, Callaecia, Asturia, and not less in the whole of northern
and inland Spain; Augustus, whose father had formed even his body-guard
of Spaniards, recruited in none of the territories subject to him
(setting aside Belgica) so largely as in Spain.
For the finances of the state this rich country was beyond doubt one of
the most secure and most productive sources; but we have no detailed
information transmitted to us.
[Sidenote: Trade and commerce.]
The importance of the traffic of these provinces admits of being
inferred in some measure from the careful provision of the government
for the Spanish roads. Between the Pyrenees and Tarraco there have been
found Roman milestones even from the last times of the republic, such
as no other province of the West exhibits. We have already remarked
that Augustus and Tiberius promoted road-making in Spain mainly for
military reasons; but the road formed by Augustus at Carthago Nova can
only have been constructed on account of traffic, and it was traffic
mainly that was served by the imperial highway named after him, and
partly regulated, partly constructed anew by him. This road, continuing
the Italo-Gallic coast-road and crossing the Pyrenees at the Pass of
Puycerda, went thence to Tarraco, then pretty closely followed the
coast by way of Valentia as far as the mouth of the Jucar, but thence
made right across the interior for the valley of the Baetis,[35] then
ran from the arch of Augustus--which marked the boundary of the two
provinces, and with which a new numbering of the miles began--through
the province Baetica to the mouth of the river, and thus connected
Rome with the ocean. This was certainly the only imperial highway in
Spain. Afterwards the government did not do much for the roads of
Spain; the communes, to which these were soon in the main entrusted,
appear, so far as we see, to have provided everywhere--apart from the
tableland of the interior--communications to such an extent as was
required by the state of culture in the province. For, mountainous as
Spain is and not without steppes and waste land, it is yet one of the
most productive countries of the earth, both through the abundance
of the fruits of the soil and through its riches of wine and oil and
metals. To this were early added manufactures, especially in iron wares
and in woollen and linen fabrics. In the valuations under Augustus
no Roman burgess-community, Patavium excepted, had such a number of
rich people to show as the Spanish Gades with its great merchants
spread throughout the world; and in keeping with this was the refined
luxury of manners, the castanet-players who were here at home, and the
Gaditanian songs, which circulated, like those of Alexandria, among
the elegant Romans. The nearness of Italy, and the easy and cheap
intercourse by sea, gave at this epoch, especially to the Spanish south
and east coasts, the opportunity of bringing their rich produce to the
first market of the world, and probably with no country in the world
did Rome pursue so extensive and constant a traffic on a great scale as
with Spain.
That Roman civilisation pervaded Spain earlier and more powerfully
than any other province, is confirmed by evidence on various sides,
especially in respect to religion and to literature.
[Sidenote: Religious rites.]
It is true that in the territory that was still at a later period
Iberian, and remained tolerably free from immigration--in Lusitania,
Callaecia, Asturia--the native gods, with their singular names, ending
mostly in -icus and -ecus, such as Endovellicus, Eaecus, Vagodonnaegus,
and the like, maintained their ground still even under the principate
at the old seats. But not a single votive stone has been found in all
Baetica, which might not quite as well have been set up in Italy. And
the same holds true of Tarraconensis proper, only that isolated traces
are met with on the upper Douro of the worship of Celtic gods.[36] No
other province shows an equally energetic Romanising in matters of
ritual.
[Sidenote: The Spaniards in Latin literature.]
Cicero mentions the Latin poets at Corduba only to censure them; and
the Augustan age of literature was still in the main the work of
Italians, though individual provincials helped in it, and among others
the learned librarian of the emperor, the philologue Hyginus, was born
as a bondsman in Spain. But thenceforward the Spaniards undertook in
it almost the part, if not of leader, at any rate of schoolmaster. The
natives of Corduba, Marcus Porcius Latro, the teacher and the model
of Ovid, and his countryman and friend in youth, Annaeus Seneca,--both
only about a decade younger than Horace, but for a considerable time
employed in their native town as teachers of eloquence, before they
transferred their activity in that character to Rome--were the true
and proper representatives of the school-rhetoric that took the place
of the republican freedom and sauciness of speech. Once, when the
former could not avoid appearing in a real process, he came to a
stand-still in his address, and only recovered his fluency when, to
please the famous man, the court was transferred from the tribunal to
the school-hall. Seneca's son, the minister of Nero and the fashionable
philosopher of the epoch, and his grandson, the poet of the sentimental
opposition to the principate, Lucanus, have an importance, as doubtful
in literature as it is indisputable in history, which may in a certain
sense be put to the account of Spain. In the early times of the empire,
likewise, two other provincials from Baetica, Mela under Claudius,
Columella under Nero, gained a place among the recognised didactic
authors who cultivated style--the former by his short description of
the earth, the latter by a thorough, in part poetical, picture of
agriculture. If, in the time of Domitian, the poet Canius Rufus from
Gades, the philosopher Decianus from Emerita, and the orator Valerius
Licinianus from Bilbilis (Calatayud not far from Saragossa) are
celebrated as literary notabilities by the side of Virgil and Catullus
and by the side of the three stars of Corduba, this is certainly
the fortune also of one likewise a native of Bilbilis, Valerius
Martialis,[37] who himself yields to none among the poets of this epoch
in elegance and plastic power, or yet in venality and emptiness, and we
are justified in taking into account withal the fact of their being
fellow-countrymen; yet the mere possibility of weaving such a garland
of poets shows the importance of the Spanish element in the literature
of the time. But the pearl of Spanish-Latin authorship is Marcus
Fabius Quintilianus (35-95) from Calagurris on the Ebro. His father
had already acted as a teacher of eloquence in Rome; he himself was
brought to Rome by Galba, and occupied, especially under Domitian, a
distinguished position as tutor of the emperor's nephews. His textbook
of rhetoric and, in some degree, of the history of Roman literature,
is one of the most excellent which we possess from Roman antiquity,
pervaded by fine taste and sure judgment, simple in feeling as in
presentation, instructive without weariness, pleasing without effort,
contrasting sharply and designedly with the fashionable literature
that was so rich in phrases and so empty of ideas. It was in no small
degree due to him that the tendency became changed at any rate, if not
improved. Subsequently, amidst the general emptiness the influence of
the Spaniards comes no further into prominence. What is, historically,
of special moment in their Latin authorship is the complete clinging of
these provincials to the literary development of the mother-country.
Cicero, indeed, scoffs at the clumsiness and the provincialisms of the
Spanish votaries of poetry; and even Latro's Latin did not meet the
approval of the equally genteel and correct Roman by birth, Messalla
Corvinus. But after the Augustan age nothing similar is again heard
of. The Gallic rhetors, the great African ecclesiastical authors have,
as Latin writers, retained in some measure a foreign complexion; no
one would recognise the Senecas and Martial by their manner and style
as belonging to one or to another land; in hearty love to his own
literature and in subtle understanding of it never has any Italian
surpassed the teacher of languages from Calagurris.
Footnotes.
[24: There triumphed over Spain--apart from the doubtless political
triumph of Lepidus--in 718 {36.} Cn. Domitius Calvinus (consul in
714 {40.}), in 720 {34.} C. Norbanus Flaccus (consul in 716 {38.}),
between 720 {34.} and 725 {29.} L. Marcius Philippus (consul in 716
{38.}) and Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul in 716 {38.}), in 726
{28.} C. Calvisius Sabinus (consul in 715 {39.}), and in 728 {26.}
Sex. Appuleius (consul in 725 {29.}). The historians mention only the
victory achieved over the Cerretani (near Puycerda in the eastern
Pyrenees) by Calvinus (Dio, xlviii. 42; comp. Velleius, ii. 78, and the
coin of Sabinus with _Osca_, Eckhel, v. 203).]
[25: As Augusta Emerita in Lusitania only became a colony in 729 {25.}
(Dio, liii. 26), and this cannot well have been left out of account in
the list of the provinces in which Augustus founded colonies (_Mon.
Ancyr._ p. 119, comp. p. 222), the separation of Lusitania and Hispania
Ulterior must not have taken place till after the Cantabrian war.]
[26: Callaecia was not merely occupied from the Ulterior province,
but must still in the earlier time of Augustus have belonged to
Lusitania, just as Asturias also must have been at first attached
to this province. Otherwise the narrative in Dio, liv. 5, is not
intelligible; T. Carisius, the builder of Emerita, is evidently the
governor of Lusitania, C. Furnius the governor of the Tarraconensis.
With this agrees the parallel representation in Florus, ii. 33, for the
_Drigaecini_ of the MSS. are certainly the Βριγαικινοί, whom Ptolemy,
ii. 6, 29, adduces among the Asturians. Therefore Agrippa, in his
measurements, comprehends Lusitania with Asturia and Callaecia (Plin.
_H. N._ iv. 22, 118), and Strabo (iii. 4, 20, p. 166) designates the
Callaeci as formerly termed Lusitani. Variations in the demarcation of
the Spanish provinces are mentioned by Strabo, iii. 4, 19, p. 166.]
[27: These were the Fourth Macedonian, the Sixth Victrix, and the
Tenth Gemina. The first of these went, in consequence of the shifting
of quarters of the troops occasioned by the Britannic expedition of
Claudius, to the Rhine. The two others, although in the meanwhile
employed elsewhere on several occasions, were still, at the beginning
of the reign of Vespasian, stationed in their old garrison-quarters,
and with them, instead of the Fourth, the First Adiutrix newly
instituted by Galba (Tacitus, _Hist._ i. 44). All three were on
occasion of the Batavian war sent to the Rhine, and only one returned
from it. For in the year 88 there were still several legions stationed
in Spain (Plin. _Paneg._ 14; comp. _Hermes_, iii. 118), of which one
was certainly the Seventh Gemina already, before the year 79, doing
garrison-duty in Spain (_C. I. L._ ii. 2477); the second must have been
one of those three, and was probably the First Adiutrix, as this soon
after the year 88 takes part in the Danubian wars of Domitian, and is
under Trajan stationed in upper Germany, which suggests the conjecture
that it was one of the several legions brought in 88 from Spain to
upper Germany, and on this occasion came away from Spain. In Lusitania
no legions were stationed.]
[28: The camp of the Cantabrian legion may have been at the place
Pisoraca (Herrera on the Pisuerga, between Palencia and Santander),
which alone is named on inscriptions of Tiberius and of Nero, and that
as starting point of an imperial road (_C. I. L._ ii. 4883, 4884),
just as the Asturian camp was at Leon. Augustobriga also (to the west
of Saragossa) and Complutum (Alcalá de Henares to the north of Madrid)
must have been centres of imperial roads, not on account of their urban
importance, but as places of encampment for troops.]
[29: With this we may connect the fact that the same legion was, though
only temporarily and with a detachment, on active service in Numidia.]
[30: The expression used by Josephus (_contra Ap._ ii. 4), that "the
Iberians were named Romans," can only be referred to the bestowal of
Latin rights by Vespasian, and is an incorrect statement of one who was
a stranger.]
[31: Probably the most recent monument of the native language, that
admits of certainty as to its date, is a coin of Osicerda--which is
modelled after the denarii with the elephant that were struck by Caesar
during the Gallic war--with a Latin and Iberian legend (Zobel, _Estudio
historico de la moneda antigua española_, ii. 11). Among the wholly or
partially local inscriptions of Spain several more recent may be found;
public sanction is not even probable in the case of any of them.]
[32: There was a time when the communities of _peregrini_ had to
solicit from the senate the right to make Latin the language of
business; but for the imperial period this no longer held good. On
the contrary, at this time probably the converse was of frequent
occurrence. For example, the right of coining was allowed on the
footing that the legend had to be Latin. In like manner public
buildings erected by non-burgesses were described in Latin; thus an
inscription of Ilipa in Andalusia (_C. I. L._ ii. 1087) runs: _Urchail
Atitta f(ilius) Chilasurgun portas fornic(es) aedificand(a) curavit
de s(ua) p(ecunia)_. That the wearing of the toga was allowed even to
non-Romans, and was a sign of a loyal disposition, is shown as well by
Strabo's expression as to the Tarraconensis togata, as by Agricola's
behaviour in Britain (Tacitus, _Agric._ 21).]
[33: These remarkable arrangements are clear, especially from the
lists of Spanish places in Pliny, and have been well exhibited by
Detlefsen (_Philologus_, xxxii., 606 f.). The terminology no doubt
varies. As the designations _civitas_, _populus_, _gens_, belong to the
independent community, they pertain _de jure_ to these portions; thus,
_e.g._ there is mention of the _X civitates_ of the Autrigones, of the
_XXII populi_ of the Asturians, of the _gens Zoelarum_ (_C. I. L._ ii.
2633), which is just one of these twenty-two tribes. The remarkable
document which we possess concerning these Zoelae (_C. I. L._ ii. 2633)
informs us that this _gens_ was again divided into _gentilitates_,
which latter are also themselves called _gentes_, as this same document
and other testimonies (_Eph. Ep._ ii. p. 243) prove. _Civis_ is also
found in reference to one of the Cantabrian _populi_ (_Eph. Ep._ ii.
p. 243). But even for the larger canton, which indeed was once the
political unit, there are no other designations than these, strictly
speaking, retrospective and incorrect; _gens_ in particular is employed
for it even in the technical style (_e.g._, _C. I. L._ ii. 4233
_Intercat[iensis] ex gente Vaccaeorum_). That the commonwealth in Spain
was based on those small districts, not on the cantons, is clear as
well from the terminology itself as from the fact that Pliny in iii.
3, 18, places overagainst those 293 places the _civitates contributae
aliis_; moreover it is shown by the official _at census accipiendos
civitatium XXIII Vasconum et Vardulorum_ (_C. I. L._ vi. 1463) compared
with the _censor civitatis Remorum foederatae_ (_C. I. L._ xi. 1855,
comp. 2607).]
[34: As the Latin communal constitution is unsuited for a community
not organised as a town, those Spanish communities, which still
after Vespasian's time lacked urban organisation, must either have
been excluded from the bestowal of Latin rights or have had special
modifications to meet their case. The latter may be regarded as having
more probability. Inscriptions, even of the _gentes_, subsequent to
Vespasian's time, show a Latin form of name, as _C. I. L._ ii. 2633,
and _Eph. Ep._ ii. 322; and if isolated ones from this period should
be found with non-Roman names, it must always be a question whether
this is not simply due to actual negligence. Presumptive proofs of
non-Roman communal organisation, comparatively frequent in the scanty
inscriptions that certainly date before Vespasian (_C. I. L._ ii. 172,
1953, 2633, 5048), have not been met with by me in inscriptions that
are certainly subsequent to Vespasian.]
[35: The direction of the _via Augusta_ is specified by Strabo (iii.
4, 9, p. 160); to it belong all the milestones which have that name,
as well those from the region of Lerida (_C. I. L._ ii. 4920-4928) as
those found between Tarragona and Valencia (_ibid._ 4949-4954), and
lastly, the numerous ones _ab Iano Augusto, qui est ad Baetem_, or _ab
arcu, unde incipit Baetica, ad oceanum_.]
[36: At Clunia there was found a dedication to the Mothers (_C. I. L._
ii. 2776)--the only Spanish example of this worship so widely diffused
and so long continuing among the western Celts--at Uxama, one set up
to the _Lugoves_ (_ib._ 2818), a deity that recurs among the Celts of
Aventicum.]
[37: The choliambics (i. 61) run thus:--
_Verona docti syllabas amat vatis,
Marone felix Mantua est,
Censetur Apona Livio suo tellus
Stellaque nec Flacco minus,
Apollodoro plaudit imbrifer Nilus,
Nasone Peligni sonant,
Duosque Senecas unicumque Lucanum
Facunda loquitur Corduba,
Gaudent iocosae Canio suo Gades,
Emerita Deciano meo:
Te, Liciniane, gloriabitur nostra,
Nec me tacebit Bilbilis._]