A Short History of Spain

by Mary Platt Parmele

A people of rare intellectual activity had been united to the life of Rome at the moment of her greatest intellectual elevation. Was it strange that no Roman province ever produced so long a list of historians, poets, philosophers, as did Southern Spain after the Augustan conquest? When we read the list of great Roman authors who were born in Spain—the three Senecas, one of whom, the author and wit, opened his veins at the command of Nero (65 A.D.), and another, the Gallio of the book of Acts; also Lucan, Martial, and Quintilian, when we read these names native to Spain, it seems as if the source of inspiration had removed from the banks of the Tiber to the banks of the Guadalquivir.

Nowhere can the student of Roman antiquities find a richer field than in Spain. And not only that, there is to-day in the manners and customs, and in the habits of the peasantry, a pervading atmosphere of the classic land which adopted them, which all that has occurred since has been powerless to efface, while the language of Spain is Latin to its core. Nor is this strange when we reflect that they were under this powerful influence for a period as long as from Christopher Columbus to the Spanish-American War!

CHAPTER V.

In the history of nations there is one fact which again and again with startling uniformity repeats itself. The rough, strong races from the north menace, and at last rudely dominate more highly civilized but less hardy races at the South, to the ultimate benefit of both, although with much present discomfort to the conquered race!

In Greece it was first the rude Hellenes who overran the Pelasgians. And again, long after that, there was another descent of fierce northern barbarians,—the Dorians from Epirus,—who, when they took possession of the Peloponnesus and became the Spartans, infused that vigorous strain without which the history of Greece might have been a very tame affair. In the British Isles it was the Picts and Scots, who would have done the same thing with England, perhaps, if the Angles and Saxons had not come to the rescue, while Spain had her own Picts and Scots in the mountain tribes of the Pyrenees. But in the fifth century there was the most stupendous illustration of this tendency, when all of Southern Europe was at last inundated by that northern deluge, and the effete Roman Empire was effaced.

The process had been a gradual one; had commenced, in fact, two centuries before the overthrow of the Roman Republic. But not until the fourth century, after the wicked old empire had espoused Christianity, did it become obvious that its foundations were undermined by this flood of barbarians. In 410 A.D., when the West-Goths, under Alaric, entered and sacked Rome, her power was broken. The roots no longer nourished the distant extremities in Britain and Gaul, and it was only a question of time when these, too, should succumb to the inflowing tide.

The Ostro-Goths—or East-Goths—in Northern Italy, and the Visigoths—or West-Goths—in Gaul, were setting up kingdoms of their own, under a Roman protectorate. The long period of peace in Spain was broken. The Pyrenees, with their warlike tribes, defended her for a time; but the Suevi and the Vandals—the latter a companion tribe of the Goths—had found an easier entrance by the sea on the east. They flowed down toward the south, and from thence across to the northern coast of Africa, which they colonized, leaving a memorial in Spain, in the lovely province of Andalusia, which was named after them—Vandalusia. But before the sacking of Rome a wave of the Gothic invasion had overflowed the Pyrenees, and Northern Spain had become a part of the Gothic kingdom in Gaul, with the city of Toulouse as its head.

A century of contact with Roman civilization had wrought great changes in this conquering race. They were untamed in strength, but realized the value of the civilities of life, and of intellectual superiority; and even strove to acquire some of the arts and accomplishments of the race they were invading. They were not yet acknowledged entire masters of Gaul and northern Spain. On condition of military service they had undisputed possession of their territory, with their own king, laws, and customs, but were nominally subjects of the Roman Emperor, Honorius.

Their attitude toward the Romans at this period cannot better be told than in the words of Ataulf himself (or Ataulfus, or Adolphus), whose interesting story will be briefly related. He says: