“But the Romans did not obtain quiet possession of the country their great enemy had lost. Nearly all the territory had to be won again from the natives; and in some parts of the peninsula the contest was doubtful for years. As if this were not enough, many of the battles of the civil wars, during the decline of the Roman republic, were fought on the soil of Spain, which, for two centuries after the fall of Saguntum, hardly knew the blessing of peace for a single year. To say nothing of lesser celebrities, we find the names of Hasdrubal, Hanno, Mago, and Hannibal, among the Carthaginians; of Viriathus, the Lusitanian; and, of the Romans, the Scipios, Sertorius, Metellus, Pompey the Great, and Julius Cæsar,—in the military annals of Spain during this period.
“Shortly after the Roman republic became an empire, under Augustus,—B.C. 30 to A.D. 14,—war was suspended throughout the Roman empire; and the Spaniards enjoyed a large share of tranquillity from that time till the barbarians poured across the Pyrenees, at the beginning of the fifth century. As a province of the empire, Spain held a high rank. The stupendous Bridge of Alcantara, the well-preserved Theatre of Murviedro, and the celebrated Aqueducts of Segovia and Tarragona, still attest the magnificence of that period. Nor was the peninsula wanting in illustrious men during these times. The most learned and practical writer on agriculture among the ancients,—Columella,—the poets Martial and Lucan, the philosopher Seneca, the historian Florus, the geographer Pomponius Mela, and the rhetorician Quintilian, were Spaniards. Three of the Roman emperors—Trajan, one of the greatest princes that ever swayed a sceptre; Hadrian, the enlightened protector of arts and literature; and Marcus Aurelius, whose name was long held in grateful remembrance by his subjects—were also natives of the Spanish peninsula.
“After the death of Constantine, A.D. 337, the prosperity of Spain began to decline. The taxes became heavier, and were increased till they were more than the people could bear. In a short time towns were deserted, fields ran to waste, and fruit-trees were uprooted, so as to reduce the value of property in order to avoid taxation. At the close of the century nothing was to be seen but desolation, poverty, and misery. But there was still a lower deep: the barbarians crossed the Pyrenees, and the country was turned into a desert.
“The great irruption of the northern nations into the Roman empire began in 375. A century later, the western empire fell. The most important division of the barbarians, who occupy so large a place in the history of the fourth and fifth centuries, were the Germans. The Vandals and Suevi, two of the nations that entered Spain in 409, were Germans. It is not certain that the third nation coming to Spain, the Alani, were of the same race. The ravages of these barbarians were terrible. Towns were burned, the country laid waste, and the inhabitants were massacred without distinction of age or sex. Famine and pestilence made fearful havoc, and the wild beasts left their hiding-places to make war on the wretched people. Even the corpses were devoured by the starving population.
“At length the conquerors themselves saw that converting a land in which they intended to live into a desert was not the wisest policy. They divided by lot, among themselves, those parts of the peninsula which they occupied. The southern part fell to the Vandals, whence it received the name of Vandalicia, which has easily become Andalusia. Lusitania, which was very nearly the modern Portugal, went to the Alani; and the Suevi had the north-western part of the peninsula, which is now Galicia. The Romans still held the rest of the country.
“But this division was soon destroyed by the Visigoths, or West Goths, another Germanic tribe. All these Germans were only a little less savage than our North American Indians. They neglected agriculture, and no man tilled the same field more than one year. War was really their only occupation. One of them boasted to Julius Cæsar that his soldiers had been fourteen years without entering a house; another declared that the only country he knew as his home was the territory occupied by his troops; and we are told by Tacitus that war was the only work they liked.
“The Visigoths, under their King Alaric, had ravaged Greece and Italy, and had taken Rome, before they established themselves in Southern Gaul, in 411. They commenced the conquest of Spain almost immediately after the foundation of their new kingdom; but they were the nominal rather than the real masters of the kingdom for more than half a century.
“Euric (466 to 484) was the founder of the Gothic kingdom of Spain; and Amalaric (522 to 531) was the first sovereign to hold his court in the country. Before long, Spain became the most flourishing of the governments established by the Germans on the ruins of the western empire. The conquerors, as they were the few while the civilized Roman inhabitants were the many, adopted the manners, the religion, the laws, and the language, of the subject people. They mingled a little Gothic with the Latin; and from this mixture arose, in the course of time, the noble and beautiful Castilian, or Spanish language.
“By degrees the Visigoths became less warlike, and finally ceased to be a nation of soldiers. Their kings were elective, and seem to have possessed more power than those of other German tribes. Still they were controlled to a great extent by the clergy. The councils of Toledo figured largely in the history of that period; and in these the bishops were a power. ‘Let no one in his pride seize upon the throne,’ says one of the Visigothic laws; ‘let no pretender excite civil war among the people; let no one conspire the death of the prince. But, when the king is dead in peace, let the principal men of the whole kingdom, together with the bishops—who have received power to bind and to loose, and whose blessing and unction confirm princes in their authority—appoint his successor by common consent, and with the approval of God.’ But the kings were not always allowed to die in peace. From Euric to Roderick, the greater number of them were assassinated or deposed. Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings of Spain, drove his predecessor from the throne. The relations of the dethroned monarch invited the Arabs, or Moors, of Africa to their aid; and the famous battle fought on the plains of the modern Xeres de la Frontera, near Cadiz, a battle that lasted three days, put an end to the life of Roderick, and to the Gothic kingdom of Spain, in the year 711.