5 Roman Provinces evolution in Iberia Peninsula. Number 1 and 2, below is Number 3

Here we can see 3 maps

 

Number 1: First Roman Provinces from 197 to 133 before Chirst, in Roman Republic

Number 2: First Provincial Division lead by Agripa, from 27 b.C. to 300 after Christ.

Number 3: Second Provincial division lead by Diocleciano from 300 to 410 a.C.

 

Number1

 

Hispania Ulterior

 

Hispania Ulterior (English: Further Hispania) was a region of Hispania during the Roman Republic, roughly located in Baetica and in the Guadalquivir valley of modern Spain and extending to all of Lusitania (modern Portugal, Extremadura and a small part of Salamanca province) and Gallaecia (modern Northern Portugal and Galicia). Its capital was Corduba.

Etymology

 

Hispania is the Latin term given to the Iberian peninsula. The term can be traced back to at least 200 BC by the poet Quintus Ennius. The word is possibly derived from the Punic אי שפן "I-Shaphan" meaning "coast of hyraxes", in turn a misidentification on the part of Phoenician explorers of its numerous rabbits as hyraxes. Ulterior is the comparative form of ulter, which means "that is beyond". The people of the region came from many different tribes, not sharing a common language nor a common government

History

 

After losing control of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica in the 1st Punic War, Carthage began to expand into the south of the Iberian peninsula. Soon afterwards, the 2nd Punic War began. Much of the war involved Hispania until Scipio Africanus seized control from Hannibal and the Carthaginians in the Battle of Ilipa in 206 BC; four years later, Carthage surrendered and ceded its control of the region to Rome after Carthage’s defeat in 201 BC.

In 197 BC, the peninsula was divided into two provinces because of the presence of two military forces during its conquest. These two regions are Hispania Citerior (Nearer Hispania) and Hispania Ulterior (Further Hispania). The boundary was generally along a line passing from Carthago Nova to the Cantabrian Sea. Hispania Ulterior consisted of what are now Andalusia, Portugal, Extremadura, León, much of Castilla la Vieja, Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, and the Basque Country.

 

There was peace in the region until 155 BC when the Lusitanians attacked Hispania Ulterior. Twice defeating Roman praetors, their success soon sparked multiple other rebellions in the peninsula. The Iberian peninsula became a center of military activity and an opportunity for advancement. As Appian claims, “[the consuls] took the command not for the advantage of the city [Rome], but for glory, or gain, or the honour of a triumph.” [3] War continued in Hispania until 19 BC, when Agrippa defeated the Cantabrians in Hispania Citerior, and Hispania had finally been completely conquered.

 

In 27 BC, when Augustus had become emperor, Hispania Ulterior was divided into Baetica (modern Andalusia) and Lusitania (modern Portugal, Extremadura, and part of Castilla-León). Cantabria and Basque country were also added to Hispania Citerior.

 

In the early fifth-century AD, the Vandals invaded and took over the south of Hispania. The Roman Emperor Honorius commissioned his brother-in-law, the Visigoth king, to defeat the Vandals. The Visigoths seized control of Hispania and made Toledo the capital of their country.

 

Each province was to be ruled by a praetor. Members of the tribal elite of Hispania were introduced into the Roman aristocracy and allowed to participate in their own governance. Roman emperors Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius I were all born in Hispania. Roman latifundia were granted to members of the aristocracy throughout the region. Cities in Hispania Citerior such as Valencia were enhanced, and irrigation aqueducts were introduced. The economy thrived as a granary as well as by exporting gold, olive oil, wool, and wine.

 

Hispania Citerior

 

Hispania Citerior ("Nearer Hispania") was a region of Hispania during the Roman Republic, roughly occupying the northeastern coast and the Ebro Valley of what is now Spain. Hispania Ulterior ("Further Hispania") was located west of Hispania Citerior—that is, farther away from Rome.

 

Number2 and Number3

With the expantion of the territory, Romans give the name of the provinces, of the most brave tribes. The one's that gave more fight.

In Mumber 3, we see 2 new provinces, Gallaeci and Cartagienense, was an option, they could manage better the situations.

 

Hispania Baetica

 

Hispania Baetica was one of three Imperial Roman provinces in Hispania, (modern Iberia). Hispania Baetica was bordered to the west by Lusitania, and to the northeast by Hispania Tarraconensis. Baetica was part of Al-Andalus under the Moors in the 8th century and approximately corresponds to modern Andalucia. Its capital was Corduba

 

Before Romanization, the mountainous area that was to become Baetica was occupied by several settled Iberian tribal groups. Celtic influence was not as strong as it was in the Celtiberian north. According to the geographer Claudius Ptolemy, the indigenes were the powerful Turdetani, in the valley of the Guadalquivir in the west, bordering on Lusitania, and the partly Hellenized Turduli with their city Baelon, in the hinterland behind the coastal Phoenician trading colonies, whose Punic inhabitants Ptolemy termed the "Bastuli". Phoenician Gadira (Cadiz) was on an island against the coast of Hispania Baetica. Other important Iberians were the Bastetani, who occupied the Almería and mountainous Granada regions. Towards the southeast, Punic influence spread from the Carthaginian cities on the coast: New Carthage (Roman Cartago Nova, modern Cartagena), Abdera and Malaca (Málaga).

 

Some of the Iberian cities retained their pre-Indo-European names in Baetica throughout the Roman era. Granada was called Eliberri, Illiberis and Illiber by the Romans; in Basque, "iri-berri" or "ili-berri", still signifies "new town".

 

The south of the Iberian peninsula was agriculturally rich, providing for export wine, olive oil and the fermented fish sauce called garum that were staples of the Mediterranean diet, and its products formed part of the western Mediterranean trade economy even before it submitted to Rome in 206 BC. After the defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War, which found its casus belli on the coast of Baetica at Saguntum, Hispania was significantly Romanized in the course of the 2nd century BC, following the uprising initiated by the Turdetani in 197. The central and north-eastern Celtiberians soon followed suit. It took Cato the Elder, who became consul in 195 BC and was given the command of the whole peninsula to put down the rebellion in the northeast and the lower Ebro valley. He then marched southwards and put down a revolt by the Turdetani. Cato returned to Rome in 194, leaving two praetors in charge of the two Iberian provinces. In the late Roman Republic, Hispania remained divided like Gaul into a "Nearer" and a "Farther" province, as experienced marching overland from Gaul: Hispania Citerior (the Ebro region), and Ulterior (the Guadalquivir region). The battles in Hispania during the 1st century BC were largely confined to the north.

 

In the reorganization of the Empire in 14 BC, when Hispania was remade into the three Imperial provinces, Baetica was governed by a proconsul who had formerly been a praetor. Fortune smiled on rich Baetica, which was Baetica Felix, and a dynamic, upwardly-mobile social and economic middling stratum developed there, which absorbed freed slaves and far outnumbered the rich elite. The Senatorial province of Baetica became so secure that no Roman legion was required to be permanently stationed there. Legio VII Gemina was permanently stationed to the north, in Hispania Tarraconensis.

Hispania Baetica was divided into four conventūs, which were territorial divisions like judicial circuits, where the chief men met together at major centers, at fixed times of year, under the eye of the proconsul, to oversee the administration of justice: the conventus Gaditanus (of Gades, or Cádiz), Cordubensis (of Cordoba), Astigitanus (of Astigi, or Écija), and Hispalensis (of Hispalis, or Seville). As the towns became the permanent seats of standing courts during the later Empire, the conventūs were superseded (Justinian's Code, i.40.6) and the term conventus is lastly applied to certain bodies of Roman citizens living in a province, forming a sort of enfranchised corporation, and representing the Roman people in their district as a kind of gentry; and it was from among these that proconsuls generally took their assistants. So in spite of some social upsets, as when Septimius Severus put to death a number of leading Baetians— including women— the elite in Baetica remained a stable class for centuries.

 

Columella, who wrote a twelve volume treatise on all aspects of Roman farming and knew viticulture, came from Baetica. The vast olive plantations of Baetica shipped olive oil from the coastal ports by sea to supply Roman legions in Germania. Amphoras from Baetica have been found everywhere in the Western Roman empire. It was to keep Roman legions supplied by sea routes that the Empire needed to control the distant coasts of Lusitania and the northern Atlantic coast of Hispania.

 

Baetica was rich and utterly Romanized, facts that the Emperor Vespasian was rewarding when he granted the Ius latii that extended the rights pertaining to Roman citizenship (latinitas) to the inhabitants of Hispania, an honor that secured the loyalty of the Baetian elite and its middle class. The Roman Emperor Trajan, the first emperor of provincial birth, came from Baetica, though of Italian stock,[1] and his kinsman and successor Hadrian came from a family resident in Baetica, though Hadrian himself was born at Rome (which however some say he made up Hadrian#cite note-5). Baetia was Roman until the brief invasion of the Vandals and Alans passed through in the 5th century, followed by the more permanent kingdom of the Visigoths. The province formed part of the Exarchate of Africa and was joined to Mauretania Tingitana after Belisarius' reconquest of Africa. The Catholic bishops of Baetica, solidly backed by their local population, were able to convert the Arian Visigoth king Reccared and his nobles. In the 8th century the Islamic Berbers ("Moors") of North Africa established the Caliphate of Cordoba conquering Baetica. The region was known to them as "al-Andalus", under which name its later history is continued.

The early 20th century composer Manuel de Falla wrote a Fantasia Baetica for piano, using Andalusian melodies.

 

Gallaecia

 

Gallaecia or Callaecia, also known as Hispania Gallaecia, was the name of a Roman province and an early Mediaeval kingdom that comprised a territory in the north-west of Hispania (approximately present-day northern Portugal, and León (province), Asturias and Galicia in Spain). The most important city and historical capital of Callaecia were the towns of Bracara Augusta,[citation needed] the modern Portuguese Braga, the administrative centre of the Conventus bracarensis, and Lucus Augusti, the modern Galician Lugo, the administrative centre of the Conventus lucensis.

Description

 

The Romans gave the name Gallaecia to the northwest part of the Iberian peninsula (northern Portugal, Galicia, Asturias, Leon and Cantabria). The Gallaeci (Greek Kallaikoi) tribes (or Gallaecians) Gallaeci lived in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. One of their southern towns, Cale, become the Roman town of Portus Cale, today's Porto, after which the modern state of Portugal is named.[1] [2]

 

The wild Gallaic Celts make their entry in written history in the first-century epic Punica of Silius Italicus on the First Punic War:

Fibrarum et pennae divinarumque sagacem flammarum misit dives Callaecia pubem, barbara nunc patriis ululantem carmina linguis, nunc pedis alterno percussa verbere terra, ad numerum resonas gaudentem plaudere caetras. (book III.344-7) "Rich Gallaecia sent its youths, wise in the knowledge of divination by the entrails of beasts, by feathers and flames— who, now crying out the barbarian song of their native tongue, now alternately stamping the ground in their rhythmic dances until the ground rang, and accompanying the playing with sonorous caetrae" (a caetra was a small type of shield used in the region).

Gallaecia, as a region, was thus marked for the Romans as much for its Celtic culture, the culture of the castros or castrexa — hillforts of Celtic origin—as it was for the lure of its gold mines. This civilization extended over present day Galicia, the north of Portugal, the western part of Asturias, the Berço, and Sanabria and was distinctive from the neighbouring non-Celtic Lusitanian civilization to the south, according to the classical authors Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder.

 

At a far later date, the mythic history that was encapsulated in Lebor Gabála Érenn credited Gallaecia as the point from which the Gallaic Celts sailed to conquer Ireland, as they had Gallaecia, by force of arms.

 

History

Pre-Roman Gallaecia

 

Strabo in his Geography lists the people of the northeastern Atlantic coast of Iberia as follows:

...then the Vettonians and the Vaccaeans, through whose territory the Durius [Douro] River flows, which affords a crossing at Acutia, a city of the Vaccaeans; and last, the Callaicans, [Gallaicans] who occupy a very considerable part of the mountainous country. For this reason, since they were very hard to fight with, the Callaicans themselves have not only furnished the surname for the man who defeated the Lusitanians [meaning Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus, Roman general] but they have also brought it about that now, already, the most of the Lusitanians are called Callaicans.

 

Roman Gallaecia

 

After the Punic Wars, the Romans turned their attention to conquering Hispania. The tribe of the Gallaeci 60,000 strong, according to Paulus Orosius, faced the Roman forces in 137 BC in a battle at the river Douro (Spanish: Duero, Portuguese: Douro, Latin: Durius), which resulted in a great Roman victory, by virtue of which the Roman proconsul Decimus Junius Brutus returned a hero, receiving the agnomen Gallaicus ("conqueror of the Gallaicoi"). From this time, Gallaic fighters joined the Roman legions, to serve as far away as Dacia and Britain. The final extinction of Celtic resistance was the aim of the violent and ruthless Cantabrian Wars fought under the Emperor Augustus from 26 to 19 BC. The resistance was appalling: collective suicide rather than surrender, mothers who killed their children before committing suicide, crucified prisoners of war who sang triumphant hymns, rebellions of captives who killed their guards and returned home from Gaul.

 

For Rome Gallaecia was a region formed exclusively by two conventus—the Lucensis and the Bracarensis — and was distinguished clearly from other zones like the Asturica, according to written sources:

Legatus iuridici to per ASTURIAE ET GALLAECIAE.

Procurator ASTURIAE ET GALLAECIAE.

Cohors ASTURUM ET GALLAECORUM.

Pliny: ASTURIA ET GALLAECIA

 

In the 3rd century, Diocletian created an administrative division which included the conventus of Gallaecia, Asturica and, perhaps, Cluniense. This province took the name of Gallaecia since Gallaecia was the most populous and important zone within the province. In 409, as Roman control collapsed, the Suebi conquests transformed Roman Gallaecia (convents Lucense and Bracarense) into the kingdom of Galicia (the Galliciense Regnum recorded by Hydatius and Gregory of Tours).

 

Hispania Carthaginensis

 

Hispania Carthaginensis was a Roman province segregated from Hispania Tarraconensis in the new division of Hispania by emperor Diocletian in 298.

 

The capital of the new province was settled in Carthago Nova, now Cartagena.

 

It encompassed the southern part of the Mediterranean coast of Spain, except that belonging to Hispania Baetica. Roughly speaking, the modern provinces of Valencia, Alicante and Murcia.

 

Hispania Tarraconensis

 

Hispania Tarraconensis was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania. It encompassed much of the Mediterranean coast of Spain along with the central plateau. Southern Spain, the region now called Andalusia, was the province of Hispania Baetica. On the Atlantic west lay the province of Lusitania, partially coincident with modern day Portugal.

 

History

 

The Imperial Roman province called Tarraconensis, supplanted Hispania Citerior, which had been ruled by a consul under the late Republic, in Augustus's reorganization of 27 BC. Its capital was at Tarraco (modern Tarragona, Catalonia). The Cantabrian Wars (29–19 BC) brought all of Iberia under Roman domination, within the Tarraconensis. The Cantabri in the northwest corner of Iberia (Cantabria) were the last people to be pacified. Tarraconensis was an Imperial province and separate from the two other Iberian provinces — Lusitania (corresponding to modern Portugal plus Spanish Extremadura) and the Senatorial province Baetica, corresponding to the southern part of Spain, or Andalusia. Servius Sulpicius Galba, who served as Emperor briefly in 68–69, governed the province since 61. Pliny the Elder served as procurator in Tarraconensis (73). Under Diocletian, in 293, Hispania Tarraconensis was divided in three smaller provinces: Gallaecia, Carthaginensis and Tarraconensis. The Imperial province of Hispania Tarraconensis lasted until the invasions of the 5th century, beginning in 409, which encouraged the Basques and Cantabri to revolt, and ended with the establishment of a Visigothic kingdom.

 

The invasion resulted in widespread exploitation of metals, especially gold, tin and silver. The alluvial gold mines at Las Medulas show that Roman engineers worked the deposits on a very large scale using several aqueducts up to 30 miles (48 km) long to tap water in the surrounding mountains. By running fast water streams on the soft rocks, they were able to extract large quantities of gold by hydraulic mining methods. When the gold had been exhausted, they followed the auriferous seams underground by tunnels using fire-setting to break up the much harder gold-bearing rocks. Pliny the Elder gives a good account of the methods used in Spain, presumably based on his own observations.

 

Lusitania

 

Lusitania (Portuguese: Lusitânia, Spanish: Lusitania) or Hispania Lusitania was an ancient Roman province including approximately all of modern Portugal south of the Douro river and part of modern Spain (the present autonomous community of Extremadura and a small part of the province of Salamanca). It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people (an Indo-European people). Its capital was Emerita Augusta (currently Mérida, Spain), and it was initially part of the Roman Republic province of Hispania Ulterior, before becoming a province of its own in the Roman Empire. Romans first came to the territory around the mid 2nd century BC. A war with Lusitanian tribes followed, from 155 to 139 BC. In 27 BC, the province was created.

 

Origin of the name

 

The etymology of the origin of the Lusitani who gave the province their name, is unclear. The name may be of Celtic origin: Lus and Tanus, "tribe of Lusus", connecting the name with the personal Celtic name Luso and with the god Lugh.

Early modern scholars derived the name from Lucis, an ancient people mentioned in Avienus' Ora Maritima and Tan, from Celtic Tan (Stan), or Tain, meaning a region or implying a country of waters, a root word that formerly meant a prince or sovereign governor of a region.[4][5][6] The name has been connected with the personal Celtic name Luso and with the god Lugh.[7]

 

Ancient Romans, such as Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 3.5) and Varro (cited by Pliny), speculated that the name Lusitania was of Roman origin, as when Pliny says lusum enim liberi patris aut lyssam cum eo bacchantium nomen dedisse lusitaniae et pana praefectum eius universae: that Lusitania takes its name from the lusus associated with Bacchus and the lyssa of his Bacchantes, and that Pan is its governor. Lusus is usually translated as "game" or "play", while lyssa is a borrowing from the Greek λυσσα, "frenzy" or "rage", and sometimes rage personified; for later poets, Lusus and Lyssa become flesh-and-blood companions of Bacchus. Luís de Camões' Os Lusíadas, which portrays Lusus as the founder of Lusitania, extends these ideas, which have no connection with modern etymology.

 

In his work, "Geography", the classical geographer Strabo suggests a change had occurred in the use of the name "Lusitanian". He mentions a group who had once been called "Lusitanians" living north of the Douro river but were called in his day "Callacans".

 

Lusitanians

The Lusitani, who were Indo-European speakers, established themselves in the region in the 6th century BC, but historians and archeologists are still undecided about their ethnogenesis. Some modern authors consider them to be an indigenous people who were Celticized culturally and possibly also through intermarriage.

 

The Lusitani are mentioned for the first time in Livy (218 BC) and are described as fighting for the Carthaginians; they are reported as fighting against Rome in 194 BC, sometimes allied with Celtiberian tribes.

 

In 179 BC, the praetor Lucius Postumius Albinus celebrated a triumph over the Lusitani, but in 155 BC, on the command of Punicus (Πουνίκου, perhaps a Carthaginian) first and Cesarus (Καίσαρος) after, the Lusitani reached Gibraltar. Here they were defeated by the praetor Lucius Mummius.

 

From 152 BC onwards, the Roman Republic had difficulties in recruiting soldiers for the wars in Hispania, deemed particularly brutal. In 150 BC, Servius Sulpicius Galba organised a false armistice. While the Lusitani celebrated this new alliance, he massacred them, selling the survivors as slaves; this caused a new rebellion led by Viriathus, who was soon killed by traitors paid by the Romans in 139 BC, after having led a successful guerrilla campaign against Rome and their local allies. Two years after, in 137 BC Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus led a successful campaign against the Lusitani, reaching as far north as the Minho river.

 

Romans scored other victories with proconsul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus and Gaius Marius (elected in 113 BC), but still the Lusitani resisted with a long guerilla war; they later joined Sertorius' (a renegade Roman General) troops (around 80 BC) and were finally defeated by Augustus (around 28-24 BC).

 

Hispania

 

Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. During the Principate, Hispania Ulterior was divided into two new provinces, Baetica and Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was renamed Tarraconensis. Subsequently, the western part of Tarraconensis was split off, first as Hispania Nova, later renamed Callaecia (or Gallaecia, whence modern Galicia). From Diocletian's Tetrarchy (AD 284) onwards, the south of remaining Tarraconensis was again split off as Carthaginensis, and probably then too the Balearic Islands and all the resulting provinces formed one civil diocese under the vicarius for the Hispaniae (that is, the Celtic provinces). The name, Hispania, was also used in the period of Visigothic rule. The modern name Spain derives from Hispania.

 

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