Hispania Tarraconensis

History

The Roman province called Tarraconensis, supplanted Hispania Citerior, which had been ruled by a consul under the late Republic, in Augustus Caesar's reorganization of 27 BCE. Its capital was at Tarraco (Tarragona, Catalonia).

The Cantabrian war (29–19 BCE) brought all of Spain under Roman domination, within the Tarraconensis. The Cantabrii 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.

The Imperial province of Hispania Tarraconensis lasted until the invasions of the 5th century, beginning in 409, which encouraged the Basques and Cantabrii to revolt, and ended with the establishment of a Visigothic kingdom.

People

When the Romans arrived in the second century BCE, the indigenous Iberian population (cf Basques) had been intermixed with Celts for centuries. Phoenecian/Carthaginians colonized the Mediterranean coast in the 8th to 6th Centuries BCE. Greeks also had established colonies along the coast. Then Romans from the three legions stationed there added to the cultural mix of the Tarraconensis. Jewish artefacts exist from the 3rd century. Germanic tribes and North African "Moors" arrived later.

Religion

The most popular deity in Roman Spain was Isis, followed by Magna Mater, the great mother. The Carthaginian-Phoenician deities Melqart (both a solar deity and a sea-god) and Tanit-Caelestis (a mother-queen with possible lunar connections) were also popular. The Roman pantheon quickly absorbed native deities through identification (Melqart became Hercules, for example, having long been taken by the Greeks as a variant of their Heracles). Ba‘al Hammon was the chief god at Carthage and was also important in Hispania. The Egyptian gods Bes and Osiris had a following as well.(1)

Exports

Exports from Tarraconensis included timber, cinnabar, gold, iron, tin, lead, pottery, marble, wine and olive oil.

External links

• World of the Imerium romanum: Hispania.

• Historical outline of the Roman conquest of Hispania and the province of Tarraconensis.