Few histories afford lessons of greater value than those of Spain and Portugal. They teem with proofs that independence and liberty are not less important to the wealth and political power of a country than to its happiness; that neither natural advantages nor the character of the inhabitants, neither increase of territory nor external peace and domestic tranquillity can in any measure counterbalance the destructive effects of a foreign yoke, or of a despotic government.

The Spanish peninsula, considered as a whole, combines most of the advantages of an insular, with those of a continental, position. Almost entirely surrounded by the sea, Spain is an island with regard to trade and fisheries; whilst the neck of land that connects her with France at once furnishes in the Pyrenees a mountainous barrier against that country, and preserves her from entire dependence upon winds and waves in her external relations.

In the climate, the genial warmth of the south of Europe is tempered by sea-breezes, in nearly every direction, and the fertile soil yields equally the necessaries and the luxuries of life—corn, fruit, wine, fine merino wool, and olive oil. The mountains abound in mineral treasures, and afforded in early times one of the principal supplies of gold and silver. The natives of this favoured land are brave, sober, hardy, and enterprising. Yet notwithstanding all these sources of prosperity, Spain, which in the sixteenth century startled Europe with the first fears of universal monarchy, was long the most enslaved, oppressed, ignorant, and indigent, of civilised countries.b

In the earliest stage of its history we find Spain occupied by a comparatively homogeneous people—the Iberians, who are related as to language; but this is probably only the result of a long, already complete development and does not at all represent the original state of the country. Unfortunately, prehistoric investigation in Spain is too far behind to offer much towards a solution of even the most pressing problems. We may assume primarily that the Pyrenean peninsula, like northern Africa, southern Europe, and western Asia, was originally settled by that short-headed, dark-haired, and light-skinned race for whom the name of Armenoids, or, from a philological standpoint, of Alarodians, has been suggested.

But the people who afterwards were called Iberian are probably nothing else than a mixture of this ancient population with the long-headed, blond race of Cro-Magnon, which came from the north and appears in France and northern Africa. For that reason alone they might be supposed to have been in Spain, situated as it is between the two, even if certain remains of their culture did not make this supposition almost a certainty. The large number of blonds which, contrary to general opinion, are found in Spain and Portugal may in the main go back to this earliest invasion of northern hordes, which was followed by two more in the course of history. Possibly the new race forced its language upon the original inhabitants and perhaps the traditions of the Iberians, which tell of the immigration of their forefathers from Gaul, refer to the invasion of this blond population. The Sicanians and Siculians in southern Italy, likewise inhabitants of territories neighbouring northern Africa, are also supposed to be related to the Iberians.c

Whence the Iberians came has always been, and must remain, a matter of dispute. That they, like the Celts, were a branch of the great Indo-European family, and had spread along the south of Europe from the slopes of the Caucasus, was long held as an article of faith by scholars whose opinions were worthy of respect; but more recent investigations tend somewhat to shake belief in this theory. That they were a dolichocephalic (long-headed) race of short stature and very dark complexion, with plentiful curly black hair, is certain, and they probably inhabited the whole of Spain in the neolithic age, either as successors of a still earlier race—of which it is possible that the Basques, who still form a separate people in the north of Spain and southwest of France, may be the survivors—or as the primitive inhabitants dating from the prehistoric times when Africa and Europe, and possibly also America, were joined by land. In any case, what is known of their physique seems to negative the supposition that they were of Indo-European or Aryan origin; and to find their counterpart at the present time, it is only necessary to seek the Kabyle (Kabail) tribes of the Atlas, the original inhabitants of the African coast opposite Spain, who were driven back into the mountains by successive waves of invasion. Not alone in physique do these tribes resemble what the early Iberian must have been, but in the more unchanging peculiarities of character and institutions the likeness is easily traceable to the Spaniard of to-day. The organisation of the Iberians, like that of the Atlas peoples, was clannish and tribal, and their chief characteristic was their indomitable local independence.

From the earliest dawn of history the centre of Spanish life, the unit of government, the birthplace of tradition, and the focus of patriotism have been the town. A Spaniard’s pueblo means infinitely more to him than his town means to an Englishman or a Frenchman. No master race has succeeded in welding the Kabyles, Tuaregs (Tuariks), and Berbers into a state, as the Romans did with the mixed Iberians and Celts; and in Spain, to the present day, with its numberless paper constitutions and its feverish political experiments, the pueblo keeps its practical independence of a centralised government, which has federated pueblos into provinces, but has never absorbed or entirely destroyed the primitive germ of local administration. The village granary (posito) still stands in the Spanish village, as its counterpart does in the Atlas regions; the town pasture and communal tillage land continue on both sides of the straits to testify to the close relationship of the early Iberians with the Afro-Semitic races, which included the Egyptian or Copt, the Kabyle, the Tuareg, and the Berber. The language of the Iberians has been lost, but enough of it remains on coins of the later Celtiberian period to prove that it had a common root with the Egyptian and the Saharan tongues, which extend from Senegal to Nubia on the hither side of the negro zone. With all this evidence before us we may be forgiven for doubting the correctness of the theory which ascribes a Caucasian origin to the primitive Iberian people. Long before the dawn of recorded history, while mankind was hardly emerging from the neolithic stage, a vast incursion of Celts had come from the north and poured over the western Pyrenees into Spain.d

THE CELTS AND CELTIBERIANS

The second invasion from the north, that of the Celts, falls in the first period of recognised history, so that we know little of how it came about or the conditions preceding it, and can only enumerate the results. It cannot even be determined if the march of the Celts upon Spain was contemporaneous with the violent incursion of Celtism into upper Italy and southern Germany, which in its further advance carried single troops as far as Asia Minor and Greece; at any rate it is probable.

The Celts introduced a new culture into the land south of the Pyrenees, which lay off from the main track, since they represent the period which as the advanced iron age followed the age of bronze. Before them agriculture was yet in its beginning; the pure-blooded Iberians for a long time afterwards held to the rough conditions of the preceding era, lived from the products of their goat-herds, on the acorns from the mountains and from the scanty grain they raised by their primitive methods of agriculture. The Celts, indeed, like most conquering nations, considered agriculture unworthy a free man, but compelled their dependents to cultivate their territory regularly and to deliver up a part of its products.

The Celtic flood inundated only a portion of the peninsula. One tribe—later called the Celtics—settled in the region about the middle Guadiana, the centre of which is the present Badajoz. The Artebrians inhabited the northwestern coast without mixing much with the native population. On the other hand a large mixed race, afterwards called the Celtiberians, grew up in what is to-day Old Castile, and brought into subjection the neighbouring Iberian tribes who were more cultured and less warlike than the dwellers in the mountains. The domination of the Celts over the whole Pyrenean peninsula is not to be thought of: not even among the Celtic tribes themselves was there unity. The genuine mountain peoples, such as the Lusitanians in the west, the Asturians, Cantabrians and Vasconians in the north, preserved complete independence. Southern Spain, where under a milder sky a certain culture had developed at an early date, was also preserved from Celtic encroachment and saw indeed more welcome strangers at its coasts—the Phœnicians, whose commercial spirit found here a glorious field for its activity. Even before their arrival the inhabitants of the country may have fashioned ornaments from the precious metal which was so abundant in their land, without valuing this treasure particularly, or expending much toil in procuring it; now for the first time, when the marvels of a foreign culture were offered them in exchange for these things, did they turn their attention to the hidden treasures of their land. But the Phœnicians were hardly the first to visit the western shores of the Mediterranean as traders and pirates; the very fact that tribes of Iberian descent had pushed as far as lower Italy points to the existence of intercourse by ships. In the same way Etruscan commerce must have touched Spain. The nurhags—those curious solid towers, which are especially frequent on the coasts of Sardinia and which must once have served as places of refuge for the people when in danger—are dumb but intelligible witnesses to the fact that the Mediterranean must have been peopled with pirates even in prehistoric times. Egypt, the only country in the world whose inhabitants at that time already kept historical records, often saw robber hordes appear on its coasts. But we know no further particulars of these ancient conditions.c

THE PHŒNICIAN INVASIONS

The Phœnicians, as already observed, were among the first who, attracted by the never-failing instinct of gain, directed their course to a country which promised the highest advantages to their commerce. The precise period of their entering into relations with the inhabitants is unknown. For some time their settlements, of which Gades, now Cadiz, was the first and most powerful, were confined to the coasts of Bætica, whence they supplied the natives with the traffic of Asia Minor and the shores of the Mediterranean, in exchange for the more valuable productions of the peninsula, such as gold, silver, and iron.[1] Previously to their arrival, the use of these metals was, it is said, unknown to the Celts and Iberians. At first, for the convenience of their trade and their worship the Phœnicians obtained permission to build magazines and temples: these soon expanded into villages, and the villages into fortified towns. Besides Cadiz, Malaga, Cordova, and other places of minor note were monuments of their successful enterprise, and proofs of their intention to fix their permanent abode in a country on which nature had lavished her choicest gifts. In time they penetrated into the interior, and arrived in the heart of the mountainous districts of the north, probably to superintend the operations of the mines which they had prevailed on the natives to open. Coins, medals, and ruins, attesting their continued location, have been found in most provinces of Spain, and even at Pamplona in Navarre. Almost everywhere have they left traces of their existence, not only in medallic and lapidary inscriptions, but in the religion, language, and manners of the people.

It is possible, however, that the residence of this people in Spain may have been confounded with that of the Carthaginians. The similarity in language, manners, and superstitions might naturally have diminished the distinction between the two nations, and in time destroyed it. The uncertainty which hangs over this period, and the apparent incongruity of the few dates handed down to us, with the transactions which accompany them, confirm the suspicion. The whole period, indeed, from the first settlement of the Tyrians to the wars between the rival republics of Rome and Carthage, is too conjectural to deserve the name of historical, though some few facts are seen to glimmer through the profound darkness which surrounds them.

THE GREEK COLONIES; THE CARTHAGINIAN CONQUEST

The successful example of the Phœnicians stimulated the Greeks to pursue the same advantages. The Rhodians arrived on the coast of Catalonia, and founded a town, which they called Rhodia (Rosas) from the name of their island. They were followed by the Phocians, who dispossessed their countrymen of Rosas, and extended their settlements along the shores of Catalonia and Valencia. Other expeditions departed from the numerous ports of Greece, towards the same destination, but at intervals considerably distant from one another, and gave names to new establishments, some of which may be still recognised, notwithstanding the changes that time has made. It does not appear that either the Phœnicians or the Greeks aimed at domination; the towns which they founded, and continued to inhabit, were but so many commercial depots—populous indeed, but filled with peaceable citizens, whose lucrative occupations afforded them neither time nor inclination for hostilities. Not so with the Carthaginians, who joined all the avarice of merchants to all the ambition of conquerors.

The African republic had long watched with jealousy the progressive prosperity of the Tyrians, and waited for an opportunity of supplanting them. That opportunity at length arrived (480 B.C.). The avarice of these merchants had caused them to adopt measures which the high-spirited natives considered as oppressive. A dispute arose: both parties recurred to arms; and, after a short struggle, the lords of the deep were forced to give way before their martial enemies. Several of the Phœnician settlements fell into the hands of the victors, who appeared bent on rescuing their soil from these all-grasping strangers. Seeing Cadiz itself threatened, the latter implored the assistance of the Carthaginians, who had already a settlement on the little island of Iviza. The invitation was eagerly accepted; perhaps, as has been asserted, the Carthaginians had fomented the misunderstanding, and urged it to an open quarrel. However this be, they landed a considerable force on the Bætican coast; and, after a few struggles, the details of which we should vainly attempt to ascertain, they triumphed over both Phœnicians and natives, and seized on the prize they had so long coveted. Thenceforth Cadiz served as a stronghold whither they could retreat whenever danger pressed too heavily, and as an arsenal where fetters might be manufactured for the rest of Spain.

The progress of the Carthaginian arms, we are told, was irresistible; it was not, however, rapid, if any reliance is to be placed on the dates of ancient writers: the provinces of Andalusia, Granada, Murcia, Valencia, and Catalonia did not acknowledge the supremacy of the republic until, with some other provinces, they were overrun, rather than subdued, by Hamilcar, father of the great Hannibal (235 B.C.), and most of the warlike nations in the interior, especially in the mountainous districts, never afterwards bent their necks to the yoke, though the veteran armies of Africa were brought against them.

Eight years were spent by the Carthaginian general in extending and consolidating his new conquests. He had need of all his valour—and few captains had ever more—to quell the perpetual incursions of tribes glorying in their independence, and strangers to fear. For this purpose he built several fortresses (the important city of Barcelona is said to have been among the number), in which he distributed a portion of his troops to overawe the surrounding country; while, with another portion, he moved from place to place, as occasion required his presence. Probably his severity alienated the minds of the people from the domination he laboured to establish. He was checked in the career of his conquests by the Edetani and Saguntines, who openly revolted, and made vigorous preparations for their defence. He fell upon them, but neither the number of his forces nor his own bravery could succeed against men to whom the hope of freedom and of revenge gave irresistible might. Two-thirds of his army perished, and himself among the number. His son Hannibal being too young to succeed him, the administration of the Carthaginian provinces and the conduct of the war devolved, by a decree of the senate, on his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who adopted towards the natives a line of conciliation; he could be cruel when he chose; but as there is reason to believe that he aimed at an independent sovereignty, he wished to secure their support in the event of a struggle with Carthage. Punic loyalty, like Punic faith, could subsist no longer than a regard to self-advantage would permit.

The city of Cartagena, which Hasdrubal founded on the modern gulf of that name, and which he furnished with an admirable harbour, was the most glorious monument of his administration. The success of his arms, the nature of his designs, roused the fears both of the Greek colonies on the coast of Catalonia and Valencia, and of several independent nations in the interior. They resolved to call in a third power, which had long regarded with jealousy the growing prosperity of Carthage. Rome eagerly embraced the cause of the discontented states (227 B.C.), probably, indeed, she had secretly fomented that discontent. She sent a deputation to Carthage, which obtained from the senate two important concessions: that the Carthaginians should not push their conquests beyond the Ebro; that they should not disturb the Saguntines and other Greek colonies. Though Hasdrubal promised to observe them, he silently collected troops, resolved to make a final effort for the entire subjugation of Spain before Rome could succour the confederates. In three years, his formidable preparations being completed, he threw off the mask, and marched against Saguntum. On his way, however, he was assassinated by the slave of a man whose master, a native prince, he had put to death.[2] The attachment of this slave to his master’s memory could be equalled only by the unshaken firmness with which he supported the incredible torments inflicted on him by the fierce Hannibal.

This famous Carthaginian was in his twenty-fifth year. He was more to be dreaded than all his predecessors united. To military talents and personal valour, perhaps unexampled in any age, he joined astonishing coolness of judgment and inflexibility of purpose. While Hasdrubal was actuated only by selfish considerations, Hannibal recognised, as the great principle of his actions, revenge—revenge against the bitter enemy of his country, and still more against the destroyers of his kindred. There is a moral grandeur in this all-engrossing purpose of Hannibal, which, notwithstanding its fell malignity, unaccountably rivets our admiration.

The young hero lost no time in extending his conquests, and amassing resources for the grand approaching struggle with the Romans. Having subdued some warlike tribes of modern Castile and Leon, and brought into full activity some rich silver mines at the foot of the Pyrenees, he marched at the head of 150,000 men against Saguntum, which he invested in due form. In vain did the Roman deputies whom the senate despatched for the purpose intimate to him that an attack on the ally of the republic would be regarded, as a declaration of war against the republic herself. He had vowed the destruction of the city. Yet, though he pressed the siege with the utmost vigour, such was the valour of the defenders that neither his mighty genius for war nor his formidable forces could reduce the place in less than nine months: it would not even then have fallen, had not famine proved a deadlier enemy than the sword. The citizens resolved that the last act of this fearful tragedy should be a suitable consummation of the preceding horrors. Having amassed all their valuable effects, and everything combustible, into one pile, and placed their wives and children around it, they issued from the gates, and plunged into the midst of the surprised enemy. The slaughter was prodigious on both sides; but, in the end, numbers and strength prevailed against weakness and desperation; the Saguntines were cut off almost to a man. No sooner was their fate known in the city than their wives, who were in expectation of the result, set fire to the pile, and cast both themselves and children into the devouring element. The city in flames soon discovered the catastrophe to the Carthaginians, who immediately entered, and put what few stragglers they could find—chiefly the aged of both sexes—to the sword.[3] Some, however, had previously secured their safety by flight. Thus perished one of the most flourishing cities of Spain, and one which will be forever memorable in the annals of mankind (219 B.C.). Its destruction hastened, if it did not occasion, the Second Punic War, as described in the history of Rome.

Hannibal mustered his forces for the invasion of Italy. The exploits of the Carthaginian hero beyond the bounds of the peninsula have been treated of in the history of Rome. While he is spreading destruction around him, and the towers of “the eternal city” themselves are tottering, our task must be to cast a hurried glance at the transactions which, after the invasion of Scipio, happened in the country he had left behind. The Carthaginian yoke is allowed on all hands to have been intolerable. The avidity with which the local governors sought pretexts for seizing on the substance of the natives; the rigour with which some of the captive tribes were made to labour in the mines; the exactions of a mercenary and haughty soldiery; the insolence of success on the one hand, and the smart of wrongs endured on the other—prepared the way to the commotions which shook all Spain to its centre, and ultimately ended in the destruction of its oppressors.g

THE ROMANS IN SPAIN

The Romans, either alarmed by the progress of Hannibal, or becoming aware of the value of such allies as the Spaniards, now sent larger armies to their assistance, headed by their ablest generals. Spain was the theatre of the first exploits of Publius Cornelius Scipio, afterwards surnamed Africanus from his victories over the Carthaginians in Africa. In Spain, Scipio gained the hearts of the natives by his great and good qualities, not the least of these being his self-command—one instance of which has ever since been a favourite theme with painters, poets, and moralists. The charms of a beautiful captive had touched his young heart, and the laws of the age made her in every respect his slave. He respected her undefended loveliness, and restored her, in unsullied purity, to her betrothed bridegroom. In cordial co-operation with the Spaniards, Scipio finally expelled the Carthaginians from Spain in 206 B.C.

The object of the Romans, in assisting the Spaniards against Carthaginian oppression, had not been the emancipation of their gallant allies. They immediately proceeded to reduce the peninsula to the condition of a Roman province, governed by their prætors. This was not easily or speedily accomplished. The natives resisted their new, as they had done their former invaders. Numantia, besieged by a second Scipio, emulated the heroism of Saguntum.b In vain did the inhabitants send deputations to the consul; he coolly replied that he was content to await the inevitable effects of famine. But their impatience could not await the slow effects of such a death; some took poison; some fell on their swords; some set fire to their houses and perished in the devouring flames. Thus perished all; not a living creature survived (133 B.C.).g The Cantabrians, who inhabited the northwestern part of the peninsula, were not even nominally subdued during the continuance of the Roman Republic. The other portions, Celtiberia in the north, Bætica in the south, and Lusitania in the west, were conquered after a long struggle, and constituted the Roman province, but remained the scenes of constantly recurring warfare. The natives revolted against the extortion and tyranny usually practised by the Roman governors of subject states; and the leaders of republican factions, when defeated everywhere else, often found in Spain abundant means of making head against the masters of the world.

The most remarkable of the native insurrections was that organised in Lusitania by Viriathus. This extraordinary man was bred a shepherd; he turned robber, became the captain of a band of outlaws, and raising a standard to which all the disaffected flocked, he defeated several Roman armies. He was vanquished by treachery, the consul Servilius having bribed three of his followers to assassinate him in his sleep. After his murder, the rebellion, as the haughty conquerors termed every insurrection for self-defence, was speedily quelled. Spain was soon afterwards the theatre of the last struggle of the horrible civil wars with which Marius and Sulla desolated the Roman world. When Sulla had finally triumphed at Rome, Sertorius, a leader of the defeated party, fled to Spain, and there long bade defiance to the dictator’s power. He was at length vanquished by Cneius Pompeius Magnus, familiarly called Pompey the Great, and, like Viriathus, was murdered by his own treacherous partisans. Pompey, during his command in Spain, merited the good-will of the nation, which subsequently espoused his cause in his contest with Julius Cæsar. After Pompey’s death his party still held out in Spain. But Cæsar repaired thither in person; his military skill prevailed, and the province was shortly pacified.b As long as Rome treated the provincials merely as a conquered people the provincials remained unsubdued; but as soon as wiser and more friendly counsels generally prevailed, the Roman Spaniard grasped the hand that was extended to him, and became one of the proudest and most loyal citizens of the empire. Left to themselves, the tribes were ever divided, factious, disturbed. United under Lusitanian Viriathus or even under Roman Sertorius, they long successfully withstood the power of the republic. United under Julius and Augustus Cæsar, they became the most Roman of the provincials of Rome.

A great susceptibility to personal influence has ever been a striking characteristic of the Spanish people. Under the sympathetic Hasdrubal they accepted the dominion of Carthage; under the fiery Hannibal they fought, the hardiest and most loyal of his soldiers, in the Punic armies in Italy. In the early days after Saguntum, when Roman Scipio came, not as a destroyer but as a deliverer, and displayed his greater qualities of clemency and justice, the Spaniards would have compelled him to be their king. But Scipio was not always clement. The successors of Sempronius Gracchus were not always just. They were not even judicious. “For great men,” says the Spanish proverb, “great deeds are reserved.” And the coming of one of the greatest men the world has ever seen was the beginning of the end of the dark days of early Spanish history. Cæsar, indeed, marched sternly through the country at the head of his legions; nor did he stay his hand until he had reached far off Corunna, where he chastised and astonished the wild tribes of Brigantium or Finisterre; but his policy in the more settled districts was ever genial and pacific. Four times did Cæsar visit the peninsula; and the fourth time—his legions well filled with loyal and admiring Spaniards—he fought, “not for glory but for existence,” on the bloody field of Munda. And with the final triumph of the great Julius begins the peace and prosperity of Roman Spain.j

Disturbances, however, again broke out, and it was only under Cæsar’s successor, Augustus, that it was finally and completely subjugated, even the Cantabrians being then at last subdued. Once reduced to submission, Spain appears to have slumbered for ages in the tranquillity of servitude, under the despotic sway of the Roman emperors. It was esteemed one of the most valuable and flourishing provinces of the empire, containing, as we learn from Pliny,h not less than 360 cities. During her subjection to a thraldom, shared with all the then known world, Spain boasts of having given birth to the celebrated Roman poets Lucan and Martial, to the philosopher Seneca, and to two of the very few good Roman emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, as well as to many other men of distinguished character, though of somewhat inferior note.b

ROMAN ADMINISTRATION

It must not be supposed that the authority of the Roman officers extended at first over all the cities of the peninsula. Some cities were governed even in the last resort by their own laws; some depended immediately on the metropolis of the Roman world; some were free, and left to their ancient laws and tribunals. They were colonial, municipal, Roman, allied, tributary; and others there were which enjoyed the right of Latium. Thus the province of Tarragona contained 179 cities, of which 12 were colonial, 13 Roman, 18 enjoying the Latin law, 1 ally, and 135 tributary. Bætica had 185 cities; viz., 9 colonial, 18 municipal, 29 of the Latin law, 6 free, 3 allied, 120 tributary. Lusitania had 45; 5 colonial, 1 municipal, 3 Latin, 36 tributary.

The colonies were peopled by the citizens of Rome, chiefly by soldiers. The inhabitants of these establishments forfeited not the slightest of their privileges by their location in the provinces. The municipal cities were those which were admitted to the honour of Roman citizenship; which were in like manner exempted from the jurisdiction of the provincial governors; and the inhabitants of which could aspire to the highest dignities even in “the eternal city.” The right of Latium was less valuable: in the cities possessing it, the magistrates only were recognised as Roman citizens. The free cities (immunes) were such as the conquerors left in the undisturbed possession of their native laws and tribunals, and were not taxed towards the support of the rest of the empire. This privilege was conferred with reluctance, or rather extorted by necessity, and was always regarded with jealousy; to six Spanish cities only was it granted. The allied cities (confæderatæ) were still fewer in number, and were at first really independent, as the word implies. The tributary cities (stipendiariæ) occupied the lowest grade in the scale of civic society, and were those which chiefly supported the cumbrous frame of Roman government.

But the distinctions between these various classes were not long maintained. By Otho many Spaniards were admitted to the rights of citizenship; by Vespasian, such of the cities as had not the privilege already were presented with the right of Latium; and by Antoninus every remaining barrier was removed, all his subjects throughout his vast empire being declared citizens of Rome: from this moment the civil constitution of that empire was of necessity uniform. The cities which obeyed the constitution of Rome were governed in a manner similar to those of Italy. Each had its municipal council or curia, the members of which (decuriones) were chosen from the principal inhabitants of the provinces. Their office, however, appears to have been unenviable, because it was in all probability gratuitous and because they were responsible for the payment of customs. Nothing need be said on its laws, as they are the same as those which governed Rome under the republic and the empire.

The military state of Spain under the Romans is a subject little understood. That a considerable number of troops for foreign wars was furnished by this important province is attested by numerous inscriptions; but, except in cases of difficulty and danger, the Roman troops in the peninsula seldom exceeded three legions—a force so inconsiderable that either the natives must have lost all desire to recover their ancient independence, or they must have become completely reconciled to the domination of their proud masters. The policy, indeed, which admitted them not only to the honour of citizenship, but to the highest dignities, civil, military, and even religious, must have been admirably adapted to insure not merely the obedience but the attachment of the conquered.

So long as the empire continued prosperous, Spain, notwithstanding the evils it was made to endure, could not but participate to a certain extent in the general prosperity. The arts of life, the most elegant no less than the useful, were taught to flourish: that architecture had reached a high degree of perfection is evident from the numerous remains of antiquity which time has spared; that agriculture was cultivated with equal success, is no less apparent from the testimony of that most excellent of judges, the naturalist Pliny. The riches of the soil, in corn, in oil, and in fruits, were almost inexhaustible; and the sheep were held even in higher estimation in those days than in the present. The vine was cultivated with so much success that the juice of the grape produced in the environs of Tarragona was pronounced equal to the best wines of Italy. These productions, with those of the mines, and the demand for native manufactures, gave rise to an extensive commerce; more extensive, indeed, than that which had existed under the Carthaginians. There was this important difference between the two conquering nations: while the African, with the characteristic selfishness of a trader, engrossed every advantage to himself, the noble-minded Roman admitted others to a free participation in those advantages.

INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY

If tradition as an authority had not long ceased to be recognised on this side the Pyrenees, the historian would have little difficulty in fixing the period of the introduction of the Christian faith into Spain. Its uninterrupted voice has named St. James the Elder as the first herald of the Gospel to the idolatrous people of that country. That the apostle traversed the peninsula, from Lusitania and Galicia to the heart of Aragon; that while at Saragossa he was honoured by a visit from the Virgin, and that by her express command he erected on the spot a church in her honour; that after his martyrdom at Jerusalem his body was brought by his disciples from Syria to Iria Flavia (now El Padron), in Galicia, and thence transferred to Compostella, to be venerated by the faithful as long as the world shall endure, no orthodox Spaniard ever doubted. With equal assurance of faith it is believed that St. Paul, in person, continued the work of his martyred fellow-disciple, and sowed the seeds of the new doctrine in Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, and, above all, in Andalusia. Certain it is that Spain can adduce her martyrs as early as the second century—perhaps even in the first.

It was during the reign of the fierce Diocletian that the fires of persecution blazed with the greatest fury throughout the peninsula. It must not, however, be concealed that the crown of martyrdom was sometimes pursued with an eagerness that evidenced rather the intemperance of a mistaken zeal, than the soberness of a rational principle. The fury of persecution cooled after the death of Diocletian. During the civil wars which ravaged the empire under Maximian and Constantius Chlorus, the Christians began to breathe: Constantine followed; and, after his conversion, the church had peace from without; but within, the partisans of Athanasius and Arius clouded the horizon of her tranquillity.

Of the three national councils held during the first four centuries, the first is that of Illiberis or Eliberis, a town once seated near modern Granada. It may also be termed the most interesting, as it was probably held before the conversion of Constantine, and, therefore, some years anterior to that of Nicæa: if so, it is the most ancient council, not merely of Spain, but of the Christian world, the acts of which have descended to us. That of Cæsar-Augusta (Saragossa, 380 A.D.), which was also national, consisted of only twelve bishops, and was convened for the sole purpose of condemning the heresy of Priscillian. The third, which was the first council of Toledo (400 A.D.), was attended by nineteen bishops, with a corresponding number of inferior ecclesiastics. Its first act was to admit the canons of Nicæa; especially those which relate to the ordination of priests; but it is chiefly remarkable for its symbol of faith, in which that great Catholic doctrine, the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son [filioque], is expressly asserted; a doctrine, as is well known, not formally received by the universal church before the fourth Lateran council in 1215. Its twenty canons relate to holy orders, to the chastity of virgins devoted to God, and to the continency of ecclesiastics and their widows. From these councils it does not appear that the Spanish church had yet received the dignity of primates, archbishops, or metropolitans. The bishops seem to have been equal in power, and independent of one another, the only superiority admitted arising from priority of consecration; neither is there any reason for concluding that appeals were of necessity carried to Rome, though the superior veneration attached to that see, and the superior characters of those who filled it, rendered such appeals by no means uncommon. The bishops and the clergy were elected by the people. Baptism was administered by the bishop or the presbyter, or, in their absence, by the deacon. In cases of urgent necessity, it could also be administered by a layman, provided he had not contracted a second marriage.

Ceremonial penance was a public satisfaction given to the church where the crime was more than usually scandalous; the penitent, in this case, occupied a place separated from the rest during a period proportioned to the heinousness of the offence. A penance of one year was inflicted on the player of dice, because the heathen deities were necessarily invoked in this ancient game; of two years on the subdeacon who married a third time, and on the ecclesiastic who wore a crown in imitation of the pagan priests; of three years on him who lent his apparel for the use of pagan processions; on the deacon who confessed a mortal sin before ordination, and on the parents who broke the betrothals of their children; of five years on him who married his daughter-in-law or sister-in-law, on the widow who sinned and married her accomplice; on backbiters, in however trivial an affair, of husbands or wives guilty of adultery, on single women guilty with different men, on deacons proved guilty of any capital crime previous to ordination; and on housewives who by stripes occasioned, involuntarily, the death of their slaves (if voluntarily, the penance was seven years); of ten years on the apostate or heretic on returning to the faith, on the Christian whom curiosity led to the heathen sacrifices, on all prostitutes, and on all consecrated virgins who broke their vow; of the whole life on the widow of a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, who remarried, on those who frequently violated their conjugal fidelity, and on the gentile priests who, after conversion and baptism, sacrificed to idols. Besides these regulations, the bishop had power to suspend from all intercourse with the faithful the man who sat at the table of a Jew, him who distributed satirical or libellous compositions, and him whose scandals deserved public censure.

There was one means by which the offenders just mentioned could obtain their restoration to the privileges of communion, even before the expiration of the time of penance decreed by the canons. This was, by soliciting peace from the confessors; that is, from such as had sustained persecutions and torments for the faith of Christ. The confessor gave his peace to the penitent in an instrument which he called literæ confessoriæ or pacificæ. This the penitent presented to the bishop, who immediately absolved him; and in token of his readmission to the rights of communion, gave him another instrument, literæ communicatoriæ, which secured him access to the sacramental table in whatever church he appeared. This superstitious custom was founded on the opinion that, from the abundance of their merits, the confessors could well afford a portion to such penitents as had none of their own. What a fruitful train of abuses indulgences occasioned at a much subsequent period, and how repugnant they appeared to the common sense and common justice of mankind, is well known.

On the matrimony and continency of the Spanish clergy, there has been much acrimonious disputation: one party contending that strict celibacy was obligatory on them from the apostolic times; the other, that marriage was permitted to them, under certain restrictions, no less than to laymen. One of the most singular characteristics of the early councils of Spain is the permission granted to bishops and other ecclesiastics to follow any honourable branch of commerce, but in their own districts.

Persons consecrated to God were acknowledged and protected by the early church; but monasteries were not introduced into Spain during the first four centuries. The women who took, in the hands of the bishop and before the altar, the vows of virginity; and the men who, in the same manner, subjected themselves to the obligations of continence and religious contemplation, passed their lives sometimes in their own houses, but generally in communities of two or three in the abodes of aged ecclesiastics. The former assumed the veil from their first profession, as a public sign of their calling. But lest war should be sworn before the strength of the enemy was known, the council of Saragossa decreed that no woman should utter the irrevocable vow, or assume the veil, before the age of forty years, though previous to that period chastity was strongly recommended, and its observance consecrated. Some of the provisions, especially of the first council, will appear unreasonably severe. We must, however, take into consideration the prevalence of idolatry at the beginning of the fourth century, and the anxiety of the fathers of Illiberis to preserve their flocks from the infection of paganism. The canons which regard the remarriage of the widows of ecclesiastics are sufficiently absurd. The sixty-seventh, which prohibited Christian women from keeping long-haired slaves, requires explanation. These slaves were males, generally of Gaul or Germany, and their ostensible business was to dress the hair of the rich ladies; their real one—such was the depravation of manners produced by paganism—was to gratify the licentious desires of their mistresses. But the gradual decline of heathenism, no less than the increasing influence of Christianity, purified the female mind.