Crossing the straits from Tangier, we pass from one of the newest to one of the oldest provinces of Rome. Standing strategically at the door of the Mediterranean, blessed and cursed with precious minerals that soaked her soil with the blood of greed, crossed with mountain ranges that hindered communications, assimilation, and unity, Spain has felt the full fever of life from the days when Old Stone Age artists painted bisons on the cave walls of Altamira down to our own disordered time. For thirty centuries the Spaniards have been a proud and warlike people, lean and tough, stoically brave, passionate and obstinate, sober and melancholy, frugal and hospitable, courteous and chivalrous, easily provoked to hatred, more easily to love. When the Romans came they found a population even then inextricably diverse: Iberians from Africa (?), Ligurians from Italy, Celts from Gaul, and a layer of Carthaginians at the top. If we may believe their conquerors, the pre-Roman Spaniards were close to barbarism, some living in towns and houses, some in hamlets and huts and caves, sleeping on the floor or the earth, and washing their teeth with urine carefully aged.18 The men wore black cloaks, the women “long mantles and gay-colored gowns.” In some parts, Strabo reprovingly adds, “the women dance promiscuously with men, taking hold of their hands.”19
As early as 2000 B.C.. the inhabitants of southeastern Spain—Tartessus, the Phoenician “Tarshish”—had developed a bronze industry whose products were sold throughout the Mediterranean. On this basis Tartessus evolved in the sixth century B.C.. a literature and art that claimed an antiquity of 6000 years. Little remains of it except a few crude statues and a strange polychrome bust in sandstone, The Lady of Elche, carved on Greek models in a strong and flowing Celtic style. About 1000 B.C.. the Phoenicians began to tap the mineral wealth of Spain, and by 800 they had taken Cádiz and Malaga, and built great temples there. Towards 500 B.C.. Greek colonists settled along the northeastern coast. About the same time the Carthaginians, summoned by their Phoenician kin to help suppress a revolt, conquered Tartessus and all south and eastern Spain. The rapid exploitation of the peninsula by Carthage between the First and Second Punic Wars opened the eyes of the Romans to the resources of what they then called “Iberia,” and the passage of Hannibal into Italy was finally outweighed by the movement of the Scipios into Spain. The disunited tribes fought fiercely for their independence; women killed their children rather than let them fall into Roman hands, and captive natives sang their war songs while dying on the cross.20 The conquest took two centuries, but once completed it proved more fundamental than in most other provinces. The Gracchi, Caesar, and Augustus changed the Republic’s policy of ruthlessness to one of courtesy and consideration, with good and lasting results. Romanization proceeded rapidly; Latin was adopted and adapted, the economy expanded and prospered, and soon Spain was contributing poets, philosophers, senators, and emperors to Rome.
From Seneca to Aurelius Spain was the economic mainstay of the Empire. Having enriched Tyre and then Carthage, Spanish minerals now enriched Rome; Spain became to Italy what Mexico and Peru would be to Spain. Gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, lead were mined with modern thoroughness; at Rio Tinto one may still see Roman shafts sunk to great depths through solid quartz, and Roman slag with an astonishingly low percentage of copper left in it.21 In these mines slaves and prisoners worked day after day, in many cases never seeing the light of the sun for months.22 Great metallurgical industries rose near the mines. Meanwhile the soil of Spain, despite mountains and arid wastes, produced esparto grass for cord, rope, baskets, bedding, and sandals, nourished prize sheep and a renowned woolen industry, and gave to the Empire the best olives, oil, and wine that antiquity knew. The Guadalquivir, the Tagus, the Ebro, and lesser streams helped a web of Roman roads to carry the products of Spain to her ports and innumerable towns.
Indeed, the most remarkable and characteristic result of Roman rule, here as elsewhere, was the multiplication or expansion of cities. In the province of Baetica (Andalusia) were Carteia (Algeciras), Munda, Malaca, Italica (birthplace of Trajan and Hadrian), Corduba, Hispalis (Seville), and Gades (Cádiz). Corduba, founded 152 B.C.. was a literary center famous for its schools of rhetoric; here were born Lucan, the Senecas, and Saint Paul’s Gallio; this tradition of scholarship would last through the Dark Ages and make Cordova the most learned city in Europe. Gades was the most populous of Spanish towns, and notoriously rich; situated at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, it commanded the Atlantic trade with western Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Britain. Its sensuous dancing girls (puellae Gaditanae) contributed modestly to its fame.
Rome knew Portugal as the province of Lusitania, and Lisbon as Olisipo. At Norba Caesarina, to which the Arabs gave its present name of Alcantara (The Bridge), Trajan’s engineers threw across the Tagus the most perfect of existing Roman bridges; its majestic arches, 100 feet wide and 180 above the stream, still carry a busy four-lane road. The capital of Lusitania was Emerita (Mérida), which boasted many temples, three aqueducts, a circus, a theater, a naumachia, and a bridge 2500 feet long. Farther east, in the province of Tarraconensis, Segovia still enjoys the pure water brought in by an aqueduct built in Trajan’s reign. South of it was Toletum (Toledo), known in Roman times for its ironworks. On the eastern coast rose the great city of Nova Carthago (Cartagena), rich with mining, fisheries, and trade. Out in the Mediterranean lay the Baleares, where Palma and Pollentia were already old and flourishing cities. Northward on the coast were Valentia, Tarraco (Tarragona), Barcino (Barcelona), and, just below the Pyrenees, the old Greek town of Emporiae. A short sail around the eastern end of the mountains, and the traveler found himself in Gaul.