Provincia Hispania Baetica
Province of the Roman Empire
14 BC–5th century

The Roman province of Hispania Baetica, c. 125 AD
CapitalCorduba
Historical eraAntiquity
• Established
14 BC
• Visigothic conquest
5th century
Preceded by		Succeeded by
Hispania Ulterior
Visigothic Kingdom

Hispania Baetica, often abbreviated Baetica, was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula). Baetica was bordered to the west by Lusitania, and to the northeast by Hispania Tarraconensis. Baetica remained one of the basic divisions of Hispania under the Visigoths down to 711. Baetica was part of Al-Andalus under the Arabs in the 8th century and approximately corresponds to modern Andalusia.

Name

In Latin, Baetica is an adjectival form of Baetis, the Roman name for the Guadalquivir River, whose fertile valley formed one of the most important parts of the province.

History

Before Romanization, the mountainous area that was to become Baetica was occupied by several settled Iberian tribal groups. Celtic influence was not as strong as it was in the Celtiberian north. According to the geographer Claudius Ptolemy, the indigenes were the powerful Turdetani, in the valley of the Guadalquivir in the west, bordering on Lusitania, and the partly Hellenized Turduli with their city Baelo, in the hinterland behind the coastal Phoenician trading colonies, whose Punic inhabitants Ptolemy termed the "Bastuli". Phoenician Gadira (Cadiz) was on an island against the coast of Hispania Baetica. Other important Iberians were the Bastetani, who occupied the Almería and mountainous Granada regions. Towards the southeast, Punic influence spread from the Carthaginian cities on the coast: New Carthage (Roman Cartago Nova, modern Cartagena), Abdera and Malaca (Málaga).

Some of the Iberian cities retained their pre-Indo-European names in Baetica throughout the Roman era. Granada was called Eliberri, Illiberis and Illiber by the Romans; in Basque, "iri-berri" or "ili-berri", still signifies "new town".

The south of the Iberian peninsula was agriculturally rich, providing for export of wine, olive oil and the fermented fish sauce called garum that were staples of the Mediterranean diet, and its products formed part of the western Mediterranean trade economy even before it submitted to Rome in 206 BC. After the defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War, which found its casus belli on the coast of Baetica at Saguntum, Hispania was significantly Romanized in the course of the 2nd century BC, following the uprising initiated by the Turdetani in 197. The central and north-eastern Celtiberians soon followed suit. It took Cato the Elder, who became consul in 195 BC and was given the command of the whole peninsula to put down the rebellion in the northeast and the lower Ebro valley. He then marched southwards and put down a revolt by the Turdetani. Cato returned to Rome in 194, leaving two praetors in charge of the two Iberian provinces. In the late Roman Republic, Hispania remained divided like Gaul into a "Nearer" and a "Farther" province, as experienced marching overland from Gaul: Hispania Citerior (the Ebro region), and Ulterior (the Guadalquivir region). The battles in Hispania during the 1st century BC were largely confined to the north.

In the reorganization of the Empire in 14 BC, Baetica was made a senatorial province governed by a proconsul who had formerly been a praetor. Fortune smiled on rich Baetica, which was Baetica Felix, and a dynamic, upwardly-mobile social and economic middling stratum developed there, which absorbed freed slaves and far outnumbered the rich elite. The Senatorial province of Baetica became so secure that no Roman legion was required to be permanently stationed there. Legio VII Gemina was permanently stationed to the north, in Hispania Tarraconensis.

Betica amphora found in Essaouira, 1–2nd century AD

Hispania Baetica was divided into four conventūs, which were territorial divisions like judicial circuits, where the chief men met together at major centers, at fixed times of year, under the eye of the proconsul, to oversee the administration of justice: the conventus Gaditanus (of Gades, or Cádiz), Cordubensis (of Cordoba), Astigitanus (of Astigi, or Écija), and Hispalensis (of Hispalis, or Seville). As the towns became the permanent seats of standing courts during the later Empire, the conventūs were superseded (Justinian's Code, i.40.6) and the term conventus is lastly applied to certain bodies of Roman citizens living in a province, forming a sort of enfranchised corporation, and representing the Roman people in their district as a kind of gentry; and it was from among these that proconsuls generally took their assistants. So in spite of some social upsets, as when Septimius Severus put to death a number of leading Baetians— including women — the elite in Baetica remained a stable class for centuries.

Columella, who wrote a twelve volume treatise on all aspects of Roman farming and knew viticulture, came from Baetica. The vast olive plantations of Baetica shipped olive oil from the coastal ports by sea to supply Roman legions in Germania. Amphoras from Baetica have been found everywhere in the Western Roman empire. It was to keep Roman legions supplied by sea routes that the Empire needed to control the distant coasts of Lusitania and the northern Atlantic coast of Hispania.

Baetica was rich and utterly Romanized, facts that the Emperor Vespasian was rewarding when he granted the Ius latii that extended the rights pertaining to Roman citizenship (latinitas) to the inhabitants of Hispania, an honor that secured the loyalty of the Baetian elite and its middle class. The Roman Emperor Trajan, the first emperor of provincial birth, came from Baetica, though of Italian stock,[1] and his kinsman and successor Hadrian came from a family residing in Baetica, though Hadrian himself was born at Rome (which some say he made up). Baetia was Roman until the brief invasion of the Vandals and Alans passed through in the 5th century, followed by the more permanent kingdom of the Visigoths. The province formed part of the Exarchate of Africa and was joined to Mauretania Tingitana after Belisarius' reconquest of Africa. The Catholic bishops of Baetica, solidly backed by their local population, were able to convert the Arian Visigoth king Reccared and his nobles. In the 8th century, Baetica became part of the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus after the Arabs conquered it. The region became known as "al-Andalus".

The early 20th-century composer Manuel de Falla wrote a Fantasía Bética for piano, using Andalusian melodies.

Proconsuls

The Province was governed by a proconsul who had formerly been a praetor.

Proconsuls Term Start Term End
Gaius Vibius Serenus[2] 20 AD 22 AD
Gaius Caetronius Miccio c. 37 AD c. 38 AD
Umbonĭus Silĭo[3] 43 AD 44 AD
Marcus Ulpius Traianus[4] ? Before 67 AD
Lucius Lucullus[5] 70s AD 70s AD
[? Marcus] Sempronius Fuscus[6] 78 AD 79 AD
Gaius Cornelius Gallicanus 79 AD 80 AD
Lucius Antistius Rusticus 83 AD 84 AD
Baebius Massa 91 AD 92 AD
Galeo Tettienus Severus Marcus Eppuleius Proculus Tiberius Caepio Hispo 95 AD 96 AD
? Gallus 96 AD 97 AD
Gaius Caecilius Classicus 97 AD 98 AD
Quintus Baebius Macer 100 AD 101 AD
Instanius Rufus 101 AD 102 AD
? Lustricius Bruttianus Before 107 AD Before 107 AD
[? Titus] Calestrius Tiro 107 AD 108 AD
Egnatius Taurinus between 138 AD and 143 AD between 138 AD and 143 AD
? Gaius Julius Proculus 122 AD 123 AD
Publius Tullius Varro 123 AD 124 AD
Lucius Flavius Arrianus before 129 AD before 129 AD
Gaius Javolenus Calvinus[7] between 138 AD and 143 AD between 138 AD and 143 AD
Aelius Marcianus between 138 AD and 161 AD between 138 AD and 161 AD
Publius Statius Paullus Postumus Junior middle of the 2nd century middle of the 2nd century
Publius Cornelius Anullinus 170 AD 171 AD
Gaius Aufidius Victorinus 171 AD 171 AD
Gaius Memmius Fidus Julius Albius[8] 183 AD 183 AD
Caecilius Aemilianus[8] 215 AD 215 AD
Aulus Caecina Tacitus[9] first half 3rd century first half 3rd century
L. Sempronius O[...] Celsus [Servi]lius Fabianus[10] first half 3rd century first half 3rd century
Quintus Pomponius Munat[ianus?] Clodianus[11] first half 3rd century first half 3rd century

    See also

    References

    Citations

    1. ↑ Arnold Blumberg, "Great Leaders, Great Tyrants? Contemporary Views of World Rulers who Made History", 1995, Greenwood Publishing Group, p.315
    2. ↑ Tacitus, Annales iv.13
    3. ↑ Dio Cassius, 60.21.5
    4. ↑ Paul Leunissen, "Direct Promotions from Proconsul to Consul under the Principate", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 89 (1991), p. 236
    5. ↑ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 9.48
    6. ↑ Unless otherwise noted, governors from 78/79 to 136/137 are taken from Werner Eck, "Jahres- und Provinzialfasten der senatorischen Statthalter von 69/70 bis 138/139", Chiron, 12 (1982), pp. 281–362; 13 (1983), pp. 147–237.
    7. ↑ Unless otherwise noted, the governors from 138 through 180 are taken from Géza Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antoninen (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1977), pp. 262f
    8. 1 2 Paul M. M. Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander (1989) p. 297
    9. ↑ Leunissen, "Direct promotions", p. 249
    10. ↑ CIL VI, 15113
    11. ↑ Leunissen, "Direct promotions", pp. 249f

    Bibliography

    37°30′00″N 6°00′00″W / 37.5000°N 6.0000°W / 37.5000; -6.0000

    1. ↑ García, Carmen Castillo (1968). Prosopographia Baetica (in Spanish). Universidad de Navarra.
    2. ↑ Castillo, Carmen (1975). Städte und Personen der Baetica (in German). de Gruyter.
    This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.