The Provinces of the Roman Empire (Illustrated Edition). Theodor Mommsen

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      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.

      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 bodyguard 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.

      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.

      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.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ