SPAIN (Σπανία, G5056). The westernmost of the European peninsulas was called variously in reference to its primitive inhabitants Iberia, Liguria, and Celtica. In historic times the name Hispania, the origin of which is unknown, prevailed. Unlike Italy and the Gr. peninsula, Spain was invaded both by the westward wandering Indo-European tribes, and by intruders over the Gibraltar Straits from Africa, a pattern of settlement which was persistent into medieval times.
Tartessus, a town and kingdom on the Baetis or Guadalquivir, in the southern part of the peninsula, was prob. visited by ships from Minoan Crete in the middle of the second millennium b.c. But for the sake of its tin, Phoen. traders from Tyre brought the area into the orbit of their overseas commerce in 1100 b.c., founding Gades as their headquarters nearby. Phoenician Carthage fell heir to this foothold, absorbed Tartessus and penetrated the peninsula deeply. Greek colonization, in the process, was limited to the NE corner, where Massilia maintained two small footholds, Emporiae and Rhodae. After her first clash with Rome (264-241 b.c.) Carthage developed Spain as a base for her European power, a process which Rome sought to check. The Second Punic War (218-201 b.c.) broke out over Saguntum. Hannibal’s disastrous invasion of Italy was staged from Spain, and Rome in her eternal quest for a stable frontier was forced first to fight and subdue Carthage in the Spanish peninsula, and then to undertake Spain’s subjugation to eliminate the Carthaginian bridgehead (1 Macc 8:3).
Such is the nature of the terrain, that Rome spent two centuries on this task. Some of her greatest soldiers fought to subdue the Spanish tribes, and on two notable occasions, the war against Sertorius (78-72 b.c.) and Julius Caesar’s subjugation of the legions of his rival Pompey (49-45 b.c.), Rome’s own grim civil strife found a Spanish battleground. Augustus completed the pacification of the rugged hinterland in the course of his systematic organization of the frontiers and borderlands of the empire. From this point onward, Romanization, already established in the towns and coastal areas under a provincial organization already almost two centuries old, began to penetrate. Roads, generosity over citizenship, and the other manifest advantages of the “Roman Peace” found an accelerating response, and Spain became notable for her contributions to imperial life and culture. Three emperors—Trajan, Hadrian, and the first Theodosius—came from Spain. Men of letters from Spain included the two Senecas, Lucan, Pomponius Mela, Columella, Quintilian, Martial, Prudentius, and Orosius.
Spain’s flair for Romanization may have been realized by Paul, and that fact supports the contention that he worked on a strategic plan to bring the empire to Christ by planting Christian cells in the key points and areas of the great system. Whether he achieved his twice-expressed ambition of visiting Spain is not known for certain (Rom 15:24, 28). According to Clement of Rome, writing some thirty years after Paul’s death, the apostle went to “the limits of the West” (Ep. 1:5), but it would be dangerous to build too weighty an assumption on a phrase so vague.
Bibliography A. Schulten, Tartessos (1922); R. Carpenter, The Greeks in Spain (1925); CAH, VIII. x. (A. Schulten) (1930); C. H. V. Sutherland, The Romans in Spain 217-117 B.C. (1939).