Hispania Tarraconensis is the province of what is known today as modern Spain. It encompasses much of the east coast of Spain on the Mediterranean along with Central and Northern Spain, and part of northern Portugal.

It was one a province of the Roman Empire.

The Roman province called Tarraconensis, supplanted Hispania Citerior, which had been ruled by a consul under the late Republic, in Augustus Caesar' reorganization of 27 BCE. Its capital was at Tarraco (Tarragona, Catalonia). The Imperial province of Tarraconensis lasted until the invasions of the 5th Century, beginning in 409, encouraged the Basques and Cantabrii to revolt, and ended with the establishment of a Visigothic kingdom.

(The Cantabrian war (29-19 BCE) brought all of Spain under Roman domination, within the Tarraconensis. The last to be pacified were the Cantabrii in the northwest corner of Iberia (Cantabria).

Tarraconensis was an Imperial province, separate from the two other imperial Iberian provinces, Lusitania (corresponding to modern Portugal plus Spanish Estremadura) and the senatorial provinceBaetica, corresponding to the southern part of Spain, or Andalusia.

People. When the Romans arrived in the second century BCE, the indigenous Iberian population (cf Basques) had been intermixed with Celts for centuries, and was overlaid along the coastline with colonial Phoenecian/Carthaginians (who colonized theMediterranean coast in the 8th to 6th Centuries BCE) and with Greeks, from Greek colonies along the coast. Then Romans from the three legions stationed there added to the cultural mix of the Tarraconensis. (Germanic tribes, North African "Moors" and Jews all arrived later.)

'Religion. "The most popular deity in Roman Spain was Isis, followed by Magna Mater, the great mother. The Carthaginian-Phoenician deities Melqart (a sun- and, later, sea-god) and Tanit-Caelestis (a mother-queen with possible lunar connections) were also popular. The Roman pantheon quickly absorbed native deities through identification (Melqart became Hercules, for example). Baal Hammon was the chief god at Carthage, also important in Hispania, and the Egyptian gods Bes and Osiris had a following as well."(1)

Exports from Tarraconensis included timber, cinnabar, gold, iron, tin, lead, pottery, marble,wine and olive oil.

External links