aesar, who avenged the obstinacy of its
resistance by massacring 20,000 of the inhabitants. Under Augustus, if
not before, it became a municipality, and was the capital of the
thoroughly Romanized province of Baetica. In the lifetime of Strabo,
however (c. 63 B.C.-A.D. 21), it still ranked as the largest city of
Spain. Its prosperity was due partly to its position on the Baetis, and
on the Via Augusta, the great commercial road from northern Spain built
by Augustus, and partly to its proximity to mines and rich grazing and
grain-producing districts. Hosius, its bishop, presided over the first
council of Nicaea in 345; and its importance was maintained by the
Visigothic kings, whose rule lasted from the 5th to the beginning of the
8th century. Under the Moors, Cordova was at first an appanage of the
caliphate of Damascus; but after 756 Abd-ar-Rahman I. made it the
capital of Moorish Spain, and the centre of an independent caliphate
(see ABD-AR-RAHMAN). It reached its zenith of prosperity in the middle
of the 10th century, under Abd-ar-Rahman III. At his death, it is
recorded by native chroniclers, probably with Arabic exaggeration, that
Cordova contained within its walls 200,000 houses, 600 mosques, 900
baths, a university, and numerous public libraries; whilst on the bank
of the Guadalquivir, under the power of its monarch, there were eight
cities, 300 towns and 12,000 populous villages. A period of decadence
began in 1016, owing to the claims of the rival dynasties which aimed at
succeeding to the line of Abd-ar-Rahman; the caliphate never won back
its position, and in 1236 Cordova was easily captured by Ferdinand III.
of Castile. The substitution of Spanish for Moorish supremacy rather
accelerated than arrested the decline of art, industry and population;
and in the 19th century Cordova never recovered from the disaster of
1808, when it was stormed and sacked by the French. Few cities of Spain,
however, can boast of so long a list of illustrious natives in the
Moorish and Roman periods, and even, to a less extent, in modern times.
It was the birthplace of the rhetorician Marcus Annaeus Seneca, and his
more famous son Lucius (c. 3 B.C.-A.D. 65); of the poet Lucan (A.D.
39-65); of the philosophers Averroes (1126-1198) and Maimonides
(1135-1204); of the Spanish men of letters Juan de Mena (c. 1411-1456),
Lorenzo de Sepulveda (d. 1574) and Luis de Gongora y Argote (1561-1627);
and the painters Pablo de Cespedes (1538-1608)