SPAIN A ROMAN PROVINCE.
It is not within the scope of our inquiry to follow the mighty
Carthaginian throughout his marvellous campaign against Rome, during
which he came so close to final success that he rode up to one of its
gates and threw his spear into the city; but we must not fail to note
that it was planned in Spain, carried out from that country as a base,
and at first was mainly fought by Celtiberian soldiers. Meanwhile,
though Hannibal had carried out his scheme of war on a magnificent
scale, and in the end all but brought Rome to terms, yet in Spain,
the country he had left, affairs had not progressed well with the
Carthaginians.
They had been left with Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal in charge,
who, after defeating a Roman army under Cneius Scipio, in the year
212, four years later marched through Gaul to the assistance of the
Africans. He made the perilous passage of the Alps successfully, but
was surprised and defeated by the Roman consul Nero, by whose brutal
orders his head was cut off and thrown into Hannibal’s camp.
The first actual reverses to the Carthaginians in Spain came through
Publius Cornelius Scipio, who, a Roman ædile of noble appearance,
eloquent and popular, was sent thither by acclamation to attack them
in the rear. He had already felt the might of Hannibal, first at the
battle of Ticinus—where he had saved his father’s life—at Trebia, and
at Cannæ, where the Romans suffered such terrible defeats. He met
and checked Hasdrubal, but could not prevent him from crossing the
Pyrenees, and so turned his attention to Cartagena, the wealthy city
on the southern coast. So well timed were his movements that his fleet
and army arrived there the same day, and leading his soldiers through a
shallow lake, where the fortifications were the weakest, after fierce
fighting he drove the defenders from the citadel, took the city, and
put every warrior to the sword. The plunder of this Carthaginian
stronghold was immense, for besides the five war ships and one hundred
and thirteen merchant vessels in the harbour, there were brought
to him two hundred and seventy–six golden bowls weighing a pound
apiece, and eighteen thousand pounds of silver, wrought and coined.
Ten thousand prisoners fell into his hands, including many hostages
of Spanish tribes left as pledges to Hannibal and Hasdrubal for the
fidelity of native soldiers. These, by a conciliatory policy, Scipio
soon secured as allies, and with their aid eventually drove the last
of the Carthaginians out of the peninsula. The last city to fall was
Cadiz, in B.C. 206, and in 205 Scipio returned to Rome, and was elected
consul in recognition of his great achievements.
All this time Hannibal was waging desperate war against Rome, but in
the year 203 he was recalled to Africa, on account of the threatened
invasion by the Romans under Scipio, who, although he had brought all
Carthaginian Spain under Roman dominion, had yet failed of the original
object of his invasion, which had been the diversion of Hannibal from
the conquest of Italy. So he resolved to “carry the war into Africa,”
and so successful was he that Hannibal was utterly defeated at the
battle of Zama, 19th October, 202 B.C. Peace was concluded between Rome
and Carthage the following year, but the African city was left shorn of
all her colonial possessions, and in such pitiable condition as to be
no longer a menace to her foes.
For this great victory Scipio received the surname of “Africanus,”
by which he is known to history, and brought to a close the second
Punic War, which has been called “the war of one man (Hannibal) with
a nation.” The first, as we have seen, resulted in the occupation of
Spain by Hamilcar Barca; the second was the outcome of the destruction
of Saguntum by his son Hannibal; the third and last Punic War was
brought about by the protests of humiliated Carthage against Roman
aggressions, and ended in its siege, capture, and total destruction in
the year 146 B.C.
Both Hannibal and Scipio Africanus died in the year 183 B.C., the
former an exile, the latter in retirement at his country seat in
Campania. It was another Scipio, Æmilianus, who thirty–seven years
later acquired the surname of “Africanus Minor” for his capture of
Carthage; and it was he who carried out the Roman senate’s orders to
raze the walls, drive the ploughshare over its site, and sow it with
salt.
Three years before the final destruction of Carthage, died another
Roman, Cato, whose reiterated “_Delenda est Carthago_” in 207, and
in Africa with the proconsul Scipio Africanus, whose luxurious mode
of living he denounced. Appointed to a position in Spain, in the year
195 he crushed a rising of the Celtiberi, in which his military genius
shone so conspicuously that he was given a “triumph” when he returned
to Rome the next year.
The Celtiberi were those brave and powerful people of ancient Spain to
whom we have already alluded. At the time of the Carthaginian expulsion
from the peninsula the Romans had not conquered the whole of Spain,
for the Celtiberians held all the vast interior region, where they
were firmly intrenched; and besides these there were yet unknown and
unsubjugated peoples in the northwest. Scipio’s rule, though brief, was
on the whole salutary, and at this time the Roman soldiery began to
look upon Spain as a desirable country to settle in after their terms
of service had expired. Many of them married Spanish women, proconsuls
were appointed from Rome, cities were built, colonies planted, military
roads constructed, and through these means the Latin language gradually
took the place of native dialects. In this manner was the Iberian
peninsula Romanized—which in those days meant civilized. It became a
province of the Roman Empire, and was divided into Hispania Citerior
and Hispania Ulterior, or Hither and Farther Spain. Still, Spain yet
required prætors who were invested with consular power, and some twenty
thousand Roman legionaries, to keep it in order, as the turbulent
Celtiberians, intrenched in their mountain fastnesses, were constantly
threatening an outbreak.
The elder Gracchus, and after him his two more famous sons, served
as governors of Hither Spain, and captured more than one hundred
Celtiberian towns. They were eminently successful, but in or about 154
the Romans under Mummius suffered a defeat, and many were massacred by
the Lusitanians.
These defeats were avenged and Roman supremacy restored by a grandson
of the great Marcellus Claudius, who had met and checked Hannibal after
the disaster of Cannæ, when the Romans lost sixty thousand men. He
founded the city of Cordoba as a Roman colony, and it soon became a
seat of learning and the home of men eminent in literature and in the
arts of peace. Rome was now mistress of the Mediterranean, which from
Spain to Syria was “hardly more than a Roman lake.” During the years
147 to 140 B.C. the Lusitanians were in revolt, led by the gallant
Viriathus, a simple herdsman, who, having seen his people treacherously
massacred, vowed vengeance against the emissaries of Rome. He cut to
pieces army after army, and at last penned a famous Roman general
and his entire command in a deep defile, and exacted terms by which
Lusitanian independence was recognised. For that alone had Viriathus
been fighting, and he was content with that; but the treaty was
repudiated by the Roman senate, and once more he took the field, only
to fall a victim to treachery and assassination.
The Lusitanian revolt was brought to a close by the taking of Numantia
(134 B.C.), after a siege of fifteen months, during which its
inhabitants performed prodigies of valour, and nearly all of its eight
thousand defenders fell by famine and the sword. The Roman army, said
to have been sixty thousand strong, was led by no less a personage
than the younger Scipio, Africanus Minor, who served Numantia as he
had unhappy Carthage twelve years before, and utterly destroyed it.
His work was carried on by others, notably by Junius Brutus, until all
signs of revolution were extinguished, and the peninsula was again at
peace.
But for the invasion of the Cimbri, about 105 B.C., and the turbulent
factions of Rome, Spain would probably have remained quiet and
prosperous; but there came to this country as an exile one Quintus
Sertorius, who had been a soldier under Marius when he was opposing
Sulla, and espoused his cause. Upon the downfall of Marius he fled to
Spain and gained a refuge with the Lusitanians, among which barbarous
but brave people he acquired immense influence. He trained them in the
arts of war, and when the Roman soldiers came against them, defeated
five of their generals in succession, including the veteran Metellus.
He aimed at establishing an independent republic in Spain, and perhaps
might have succeeded had not some of his followers, probably bribed by
Roman gold, treacherously stabbed him at a banquet.
About the time that Sertorius was fighting the barbarous Cimbri in
defence of his native country, there was born a child who became known
in after years as Pompey. It came about that, when he had grown to
manhood, he was sent to Spain to defeat and capture the older soldier,
then leader of the revolted Lusitanians. He was several times defeated
by the wily Sertorius, but after his assassination he found the matter
of pacifying Spain comparatively easy. He gained repeated victories,
and eventually returned to Rome in triumph, his star in the ascendant.
At the beginning of this century, so charged with momentous events,
the great Cæsar was born, five or six years the junior of Pompey,
whose rival he became in later years for the applause and favours of
the Roman populace. In the year 68 B.C. he also went to Spain, having
obtained a quæstorship; and again, in 63, he was given the province of
Farther Spain, where he amassed great wealth, and gained a military
experience which was of such service to him while conducting those
immortal campaigns in Britain and Gaul.
Though the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey had the exclusive
possession of Rome as its object, yet most of their battles were fought
on the soil of Spain. In the year 49 Cæsar defeated Pompey’s legates in
Spain; the following year he overthrew Pompey himself at Pharsalia, in
Thessaly; but the final battle was fought about the year 45, between
Cæsar and the sons of his dead rival.
These great Romans had subdued for their country the East and the
West; had conquered Gaul and Syria, Britain and Africa; but the great
and decisive conflict, which was to forever settle the question of
supremacy between the Roman senate and the greatest Roman of all time,
took place in Spain! It was at Munda, not far from Cordova, in the
valley of the Guadalquivir, and it is said that Cæsar himself led the
soldiers in the ranks; saying afterward that though he had often fought
for victory, yet he had never before fought for his life. More than
thirty thousand men were slain, among them one of Pompey’s sons; and
this great victory made Cæsar “undisputed master of the Roman world,”
From Spain he returned to a triumph in Rome; but he was not long to
enjoy the fruits of his victories, the titles of “_Pater patriæ_” and
“_Imperator_” for he was assassinated the following year.
How inextricably interwoven are the threads of history which bind Rome
and Spain, we may note by glancing at the names of four only of the
former’s greatest men: Sulla, the first Roman to invade the Eternal
City with her own troops, “set the pace” for Cæsar at the Rubicon;
Sulla’s champion, Pompey, pursued Sertorius, friend of Marius, into
Spain and accomplished his death; in his turn, Pompey fell before the
might of Cæsar, who triumphed over all!
While it is true that “peace hath her victories,” yet they are not
often recorded, and the history of Spain for the next four hundred
years is mainly uneventful. But although Hispania had been freed from
participation in Roman feuds, yet the barbaric population of the far
north was not entirely subjugated until the time of Augustus, who
finally completed the work begun by the Scipios and continued by Pompey
and Cæsar. Ten years later, under Marcus Agrippa, Spain had become
completely Latinized, and finally was considered “more completely Roman
than any other province beyond the limits of Italy.”
During the Roman occupation cities were founded, notably Cordova,
Saragossa, and Italica (the latter now in ruins, near Seville);
magnificent public works were constructed, such as roads, aqueducts,
bridges, and amphitheatres. The best examples of Roman engineering
and architecture may now be found and studied in Spain, such as an
amphitheatre at Merida, another at Saguntum, the Roman bridges at
Cuenca, Salamanca, and Cordova, and that splendid bridge over the
Guadiana built by Trajan, which is half a mile long, thirty–three feet
above the river, on eighty–one arches of granite; the aqueducts of
Tarragona, Evora, and Seville, and that surpassing piece of engineering
work which has commanded the admiration of centuries, the aqueduct
bridge of Segovia, twenty–six hundred feet long and one hundred feet
in height.
These material evidences of Roman occupation may be seen to–day, and
besides these, the finest of Roman coins are frequently discovered.
But more than in mere mechanical works Rome has left her impress upon
Hispania: in the language spoken there, in the illustrious names of
Roman citizens born there, such as Trajan and Hadrian, her great
rulers; Lucan, Martial, the two Senecas, Quintilian, Columella,
Pomponius Mela, Silius Italicus, Florus—most of whose works are
classics in the Latin tongue.
Thus, while the names of Rome’s greatest soldiers are written across
Spain’s page of history, in the years of her peace and prosperity other
Romans appeared equally famous in the realms of literature.
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