Cultural Change

Agrippa, as part of his pacification program, forced his enemies to abandon their traditional dwelling places and resettled them on flat land where they were easier to police; the town of Juliobriga in Cantabria was a product of this policy (Flor. 2.33.59). Rome also intervened to prevent the growth of large native political groupings. This was an early part of her policy, as can be seen from the way that in 189 BC she “liberated” the minor settlement of the Turris Lascutana from its mother town (ILS 15), and it was this suppression of native synoecism which sparked off the Numantine War in 143 bc.

In general, however, Rome appears to have pursued a laissez-faire approach to cultural change. Agrippa’s comments of the Punic nature of the southern coast of

Spain were not merely provoked by the race of those he found there. Punic culture also flourished. Towns such as Malaga and Adra coined in neo-Punic well into the Julio-Claudian period - some two hundred years after Roman occupation had begun in the region. This was also true of Cadiz, where the great Semitic-style temple dedicated to Melkart, syncretized to Hercules, remained a major feature of the peninsula and a focus of pilgrimage until the end of the Roman period (Garcia y Bellido 1963, Fear 2005). At Carmona in the Guadalquivir valley, Punic shaft burials continued well into the imperial period. Such an easy-going attitude also prevailed in the north. A striking example is that the thoroughly Celtic, and fortified, castro of Viladonga was allowed to exist alongside the Roman town of Lugo in Galicia. Language also persisted - Calpurnius Piso’s murderers spoke only Celtiberian.

Many in the peninsula, however, embraced the Roman way of life, and while change was slow in the republican period, the imperial period saw the growth of towns with many typical and at times luxurious Roman features; the amphitheaters at Cordoba and Italica were among the largest in the Roman world, and the spectacular aqueduct at Segovia constructed by the local town council and standing 90 feet high is perhaps emblematic of the peninsula in this period. This enthusiasm for Roman cultural mores may have been stimulated by Vespasian’s grant of the Latin right, ius Latii, to the peninsula (Gonzalez 1986; for the Latin right, Lintott, citizenship, sections 4 and 5). In the countryside, too, villas are found, such as that at Olmeda in Palencia or La Milreu in the Algarve, which could rival those to be found in any other part of the empire.