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Roman Imperial province of Hispania Tarraconensis, 120 AD

Hispania Tarraconensis was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania. It encompassed much of the Mediterranean coast of Spain along with the central plateau and the north coast, and part of northern Portugal. Southern Spain, the region now called Andalucia, was the province of Hispania Baetica. On the Atlantic west lay the province of Lusitania.

Hispania since the Diocletian reforms.

The Imperial Roman province called Tarraconensis, supplanted Hispania Citerior, which had been ruled by a consul under the late Republic, in Augustus's reorganization of 27 BC. Its capital was at Tarraco (modern Tarragona, Catalonia). The Cantabrian Wars (29–19 BC) brought all of Iberia under Roman domination, within the Tarraconensis. The Cantabri 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. Servius Sulpicius Galba, who served as Emperor briefly in 68–69, governed the province since 61. Pliny the Elder served as procurator in Tarraconensis (73). Under Diocletian, in 293, Hispania Tarraconensis was divided in three smaller provinces: Gallaecia, Carthaginiensis and Tarraconensis. The Imperial province of Hispania Tarraconensis lasted until the invasions of the 5th century, beginning in 409, which encouraged the Basques and Cantabri to revolt, and ended with the establishment of a Visigothic kingdom.

Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula.

When the Romans arrived in the 2nd century BC, the indigenous Iberian population (Basques) had been intermixed with the Celts for centuries, forming the Celtiberian culture typical of pre-Romanized Hispania. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians colonized the Mediterranean coast in the 8th to 6th centuries BC. The Greeks also had established colonies along the coast. Roman legionnaires stationed there added to the cultural mix of Tarraconensis. Jewish artifacts exist from the 3rd century. Germanic tribes and North African Moors arrived later.

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

• Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula

• World of the Imperium Romanum: Hispania
• Detailed Map of Pre-Roman Peoples in Iberia (around 200 BC)
• Historical Outline of the Roman conquest of Hispania and the Province of Tarraconensis

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