4 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINprovincials under their patronage. Theodosius I drew a coterie of
Spaniards with him to Constantinople, the most famous of whom was
the Prefect Maternus Cynegius, noted for his destruction of pagan
temples in the eastern provinces in the 390s.^6
At a lower level but more consistent than the periodic provision
of emperors and administrators was the role of Spain as a source
of manpower for the Roman army, especially in the early Empire.
Inscriptions relating to Spanish units and individual soldiers can be
found all over the confines of the Empire, not least in Britain. Eco-
nomically too Spain had much to contribute to Rome. It was particu-
larly notable as a source of silver, mined in the mountains of the
north, and of horses from the valleys of the south.^7
In return Rome gave the Spanish provinces a measure of internal
order and freedom from external aggression. Only in the middle of
the third century did 'Barbarians' in the form of Germans from across
the Rhine, who forced their way through Gaul, and Berbers from
Mrica, succeed in breaking through the adjacent provinces and briefly
troubling the tranquillity of Spain. Internally too the peninsula was
little disturbed by wider political upheavals in the Roman world. It
was from provincial governorships in Spain that the short-reigned
emperors Galba (68-69) and Otho (69) rebelled to replace the Julio-
Claudian dynasty in Rome, and the province of Tarraconensis in the
north-east of the peninsula briefly belonged to the Gallic Empire of
the usurper Postumus (260-269). Otherwise the order of the Roman
Empire was untroubled by happenings in Spain before the fifth
century.
The prosperity and tranquillity of Roman Spain, up to the end of
the fourth century, is still well illustrated in many of its surviving
monuments, such as the great public buildings of cities like Merida
(Emerita Augusta) and Italica, the palatial private villas of the valleys
of the Ebro, Guadiana and Guadalquivir, the system of roads and the
impressive bridges and aqueducts that still existed and functioned
when barbarians again broke into the Spanish provinces, late in 409.^8
As in other parts of the West, Roman culture, in the form of lan-
guage, art, religion, education, architecture and government, was
established in Spain through a network of towns interconnected by
roads. There were indigenous settlements, such as Numantia, which
had put up prolonged resistance to Roman conquest but these lacked
the size and sophistication of the new urban foundations of the vic-
tors. In a number of cases Roman cities were built in close proximity