ans, and Corsicans were continually furnishing occasion for
"village triumphs"--the formal sovereignty of Rome at the commencement
of this period was established only in the two Spanish provinces,
which embraced the larger eastern and southern portions of the
peninsula beyond the Pyrenees. We have already(1) attempted to
describe the state of matters in the peninsula. Iberians and Celts,
Phoenicians, Hellenes, and Romans were there confusedly intermingled.
The most diverse kinds and stages of civilization subsisted there
simultaneously and at various points crossed each other, the ancient
Iberian culture side by side with utter barbarism, the civilized
relations of Phoenician and Greek mercantile cities side by side with
an incipient process of Latinizing, which was especially promote
by the numerous Italians employed in the silver mines and by the
large standing garrison. In this respect the Roman township of
Italica (near Seville) and the Latin colony of Carteia (on the bay
Of Gibraltar) deserve mention--the latter being the first transmarine
urban community of Latin tongue and Italian constitution. Italica
was founded by the elder Scipio, before he left Spain (548), for
his veterans who were inclined to remain in the peninsula--probably,
however, not as a burgess-community, but merely as a market-place.(2)
Carteia was founded in 583 and owed its existence to the multitude of
camp-children--the offspring of Roman soldiers and Spanish slaves--who
grew up as slaves de jure but as free Italians de facto, and were now
manumitted on behalf of the state and constituted, along with the old
inhabitants of Carteia, into a Latin colony. For nearly thirty years
after the organizing of the province of the Ebro by Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus (575, 576)(3) the Spanish provinces, on the whole, enjoyed the
blessings of peace undisturbed, although mention is made of one or two
expeditions against the Celtiberians and Lusitanians.

Lusitanian War

But more serious events occurred in 600. The Lusitanians, under the
leadership of a chief called Punicus, invaded the Roman territory,
defeated the two Roman governors who had united to oppose them, and
slew a great number of their troops. The Vettones (between the Tagus
and the Upper Douro) were thereby induced to make common cause with
the Lusitanians; and these, thus reinforced, were enabled to extend
their excursions as far as the Mediterranean, and to pillage even
the territory