Spain

Such is the ethnic picture during the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. With such a Spain the Ionic Greek traders now came into contact, in rivalry with the Carthaginians who had fallen heirs to the century-old Phoenician exploitation of these western marts. Neither the Phoenicians nor the Carthaginians left any permanent mark upon the land, while the Greeks influenced it profoundly. Ships from Tyre and Sidon may have traded beyond the Straits and in Cadiz at least as early as the 9th century B.C.; yet modern archaeology, which has located and excavated Greek and Iberian and Roman towns, has not laid bare a single Phoenician settlement or found more important Phoenician remains than the odds and ends of trinkets and jewels and similar articles of barter. The inference is clear that, except perhaps at Cadiz, the Phoenicians built no towns, but had mere trading-posts and points of call.

The Greeks in Spain.—The Greeks, on the other hand, founded true colonies along the east and south coasts, where un mistakable traces of their settlements have survived. The sites of Hemeroskopeion (at the modern Calpe) and Mainake (at the mouth of the Rio de Velez near Malaga) have been identified, though not yet excavated ; and Emporion (now Ampurias, on the Pyrenean east coast near the French frontier) has been syste matically dug, revealing a fortified town with strong gates and walls, streets more or less at right angles, remains of houses, and a shrine of Asklepios with a cult statue of the god.

While there is almost nothing in Iberian art ascribable to Phoenician or Punic influence, the art of the Greeks had indisput ably a revolutionary effect. A collection of sculptures found at Cerro de los Santos in the province of Murcia, and now in the Madrid Archaeological Museum, is a hybrid of archaic Greek and Iberian art. Fragments of Ibericized Ionic Greek architectural mouldings have been discovered in the same region ; and the pottery from Elche and the surrounding districts is full of unmis takable borrowings from the ornamental repertoire of Greek vases. The earliest Iberian money was coined in direct imitation of Greek types of the 4th century B.C. Archaic Greek bronzes dis covered in many parts of Murcia and Alicante, and the actual material traces of the Phocaean colonies tell us that the Greeks were once in this part of Spain.

Elsewhere in the Mediterranean this period is covered by the written chronicles of the ancient historians ; but the records for Spain are extraordinarily meagre. We hear no more about Tar

tessos after the 6th century B.C. Instead, Greek sources of the 5th century begin to speak of the whole Tartesso-Iberian region as Iberia ; and recent archaeological exploration has confirmed this emphasis upon the Iberians and established them as the great civilizing force of that time in ancient Spain.

Spain Under the Carthaginians.

During the 4th century B.C. the Carthaginian encroachment reached most of the Iberian homeland, the Greek contact was broken, and the Greco-Iberian culture in Murcia waned. But in recompense, and probably under the pressure of this Punic expansion, the Iberian penetration of the interior gathered great headway. During the 3rd century B.C. the most flourishing Iberian centre in Spain is the valley of the Ebro, where in the 5th century there had been no Iberian settlements whatever ; and Greek writers of the time no longer refer to the Castilian uplands as Celtic but as "Celtiberian." Recent excava tion has confirmed this gradual Iberianization of almost the whole of pre-Roman Spain. Particularly of Numantia, and largely as a result of the careful and systematic work of Prof. Schulten in laying bare the sites of the Roman and Celtiberian encampments there, an extensive insight into this Iberianized Celtic culture of the 3rd and and centuries B.C. has been gained.

The Romanization of Spain.

When the Romans began their efforts to Latinize the land after the close of the Second Punic War (201 B.c.) they found not a Celtic civilization like that of Gaul, but an Iberian culture of the general type which the Greeks had encountered and influenced before them. The dramatic story of Scipio and the capture of Numantia in 133 B.C. indicates with how much bloodshed and violence this Roman pacification was attended. However, the archaeological in contrast to the his torical evidence shows that the two civilizations must have endured side by side for more than a century and suggests a more tolerant penetration and absorption. The latest sculptures from Cerro de los Santos, though still Iberian in style, borrow Roman statuary motives. In other regions true Iberian pottery is often found mixed with thoroughly Roman ware (terra sigillata). Iberian jewellery and gold have been found amid Roman surroundings; and most of the coinage bearing in Iberian script the names of Iberian towns dates from after the Roman conquest.