Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 2.djvu/337

 1078 HISPANIA. pania, [whereas by those of old the name of Iberia] was applied only to the part within the Ibems. (Strab. iii. p. 166; the words within brackets are sapplied as the most probable restoration of a gap in the text.) It most be obserred that such statements as these express something more than a confusion in the minds of the Greek writers between the territories of the Celts and of the Iberians : they express the fact in ethnography, that the Iberian race extended beyond the boundaries of Spain as defined by the PyreneeSf and that they were to a great extent intermixed with the Celts in W. Europe. (See below, on the earliest inhabitanta of Spain: No. VII.) III. SPAUr AS KNOWIT TO THE CARTHA0D(IAK8 AicD TBS Romans. 1. Doum to Uie End of the First Punic War.-^ The internal state of the peninsula, down to the period at which we have now arrived, will be spoken of below; but, in order to estimate the knowledge of the country possessed by the Romans, we must first glance at its relations to the other great power of the Medi- terranean. From the earliest known period of anti- quity the Phoenicians had held coounercial intercourse with Spain; and there is more than a probability that Tyre had established a sort of dominion over the part adjacent to tlie S. coast, the Tarshish of Scripture, and the Tabtessis of the Greeks. {Isaiahy xxiii. 10, where the prophet compares the liberty of Tarshish, consequent on the fall of Tyre, to the fVee course of a river, — such, for example, as her own Gtiadalquinr, — when a mighty obstacle is re- moved.) The phrase " ships of Tarshish " appears to have been as familiar in the mercantile marine of Tyre as ** Indiamen" in our own (2 Chron. ix. 21, XX. 36, 37 : Ps. xlviiL 7 ; /«. Ix. 9 ; Ezek. xxvii. 25); and the products of the Spanish mines, *' silver, iron, tin, and lead," are mentioned by Ezekiel as among " the multitude of all kind of riches, by reason of which Tanhish was her merchant" (Exek, xxvii. 12.) Ph<ienician settlements were numerous on the S. coast of the peninsula, within the Straits, and beyond them there was the great commercial colony of Gades, the emporium for tiie traffic of Tyre with the shores of the Atlantic. But this was not all. From the verj physical nature of the country, it was scarcely possible that the Phoenicians should have abstained from extending their power up the navi- gable stream of the Baetis, of which Gades may be regarded as the port, over the fertile phiins of Bae- tJca (^Andaluda)y as far N. as the Sierra Mortna^ which at once contained the mineral wealth in qnest of which they came, and fonned a barrier against the natives of the centre. Be this as it may, we know for certain that in the narrower tract between the sea-shore and the Sierra Nevada [Iupula] the people were a mixed race of Iberian and Phoe- nician blood, called Mi^o^iviKts (Strab. iii. p. 149: Bastuu). The power which the Carthaginians ob- tained during this period over the natives cannot be positively defined; but they received many of them into their armies by voluntary enlistment. 2. The ViceroyaUy of ike Honte of Barca. — Such were the relations ^ Spain to Carthage ; and as to Rome, she had had as yet nothing to do with the peninsula, when the First Punic War was bronght to an end, B. c. 241. Carthage seemed to have expended all her resources in the vain effort to secure Sicily ; and, when the revolt of her African meroenarica gave Rome an opportunity of filching fflSPANIA. away from her her oldest pnmnces, Sanlima and Corsica (b. c. 236), the ooDtest might well he thought to have concluded. "I believe,** saja Niebuhr, ^ that there were fellowrs at Carthage, such as Hanno, who, partly from envj of Hamilrsr, and partly from their own stupidit j, would not or could not see that, after the loas of Scily and ^- dinio, there were yet other quarters from which the republic might derive great benefits. When, after the American War, it was thought that the igno- minious peace of Paris had put an end to the great- ness of England, Pitt undertook with doahle coen^ the restoration of his oountiy, and displayed las extraordinary powers. It was In the same spirit that Hamilcar acted: he turned his eyes to Spira: .... he formed the plan of making S^aan a (a«- vince, which should compensate for the lass of SkI^ and Sardinia. The latter ishmd was then and is still very unhealthy, and its interior was ahaost inaccessible. Sicily had an efieminate and nnwar- like population, and, rich as it was, it might indeed have increased the maritime power of Carthage, bes it would not have given her anj additional militanr strength. The weakness of Carthage consisted ia her having no armies ; and it was a grand concep- tion of Hamilcar's to transform Spain into a Car- thaginian country, from which national armies might be obtained. His object, tlierefoi^ was, on the <ne hand, to subdue the Spaniards, and on the other Xa win their sympathy, and to change them into a Panic nation under the dominion of Carthsge. (Polyb. ii. 1 ; Dlod. Fr. Lib. xxv.; Edog. xL p. 510.) The conduct of the Romans towards their subjects was haughty, and always made them ftei that they were d&tpised. The highly refined Greeks who were themselves wont to look with contempt oo all foreigners, must have felt that haoghtineas vcfj keenly. The Spaniards and Celts were of comse less respected. Common soldieis in the Bomaa armies not nnfrequently, especially in the times of the emperors, married native women of the coso- tries in which they were stationed. Sach nm il ig e s were regarded as concubinage, and from them spiaog a class of men who were very dangerous to the Romans. The Carthaginians acted more wisely, by making no restrictions in r^ard to such mar- riages. Hannibal himself married a Spanish wonsn of Castulo (Liv. xxiv. 41: comp. Diod. Tt. lib. XXV.; Eclog. ii. p. 510, foil.), and the practice most have been very common among the CarthaginiaiB. This was an excellent way to gain the good will of the natives. The whole of the southern coast of Spain had resources of no ordinary kind; it fur- nished all the productions of Sicily and Sardinia, and in addition to them it had very rich silnr mines, the working of which has been revived in our own days. Hamilcar was the fint who intio- duced there a regular and systematic mode ef mining, and thb led him, or his son- in-law, to build the town of New Carthage (^Carihagend). While the Carthaginians thus gained the sympathy* of the nation, they acquired a population of millions which relieved them from the necessity of hiring faithless mercenaries, as they had been obliged to do in the First Punic War ; they were enabled to lalse armies in Spain just as if it had been their own coontiy. The Romans no doubt observed these proccedii^ with feelings of jealousy, but could not prevent them, as long as the Cisalpine Gauls stood on their frontiers, ready to avenge the defeats of the Senones and Boians." ^Niebuhr, LeetttreaonBomiim Eielorff