INTRODUCTION 9But even here survival of pre-Roman social organisation and material
culture is more striking than any marks of assimilation.
As a consequence it was these regions that created the greatest
military problem for the Romans in the peninsula. Until the disap-
pearance of Mauretania Tingitana, south of the Straits of Gibraltar,
in the late third century, Hispania was not a frontier province of the
Empire and might not normally have required a legionary garrison.
However it did have its own internal frontier, that facing the north-
ern mountains. Leon, Astorga and Braga were all legionary fortresses
in origin and from them units of the Roman army, notably in the
early Empire the Legio Septima Gemina (Seventh Legion), attempted
to control the activities of the inhabitants of the Asturias and Galicia,
who continued by their raiding and economic lifestyle to threaten the
security and prosperity of their settled neighbours to the south in the
Meseta and lower Ebro valley. When the Romans failed to check this,
a limes or military frontier had to be created. This was to be one of
the unsolved problems that they left to their successors.
However, Spain under Roman rule was, for over four centuries,
tranquil and economically prosperous, famous for its silver, corn and
horses. Its great cities were amongst the finest and most flourishing
in the western half of the Empire and it was an integral part of a
wider world, to which it was joined not only by administrative ties but
by a common religion and a common Latin culture, towards both
of which Spanish provincials had made distinguished contributions.
In the fifth century a sudden and dramatic turn of events threw the
peninsula into turmoil, broke the fragile internal unity created by the
Romans and severed many of its ties with the outside world. When a
measure of order was re-established by the Visigoths over a century
later much had been lost and much was changed, but also, for good
or ill, some things remained the same.
None of the later conquerors of the peninsula were to have such
advantages as the Romans. The Visigoths and the Arabs were them-
selves the beneficiaries of Graeco-Roman culture, both material and
intellectual, and in both cases had less that was clearly and attractively
superior to offer the conquered populations. The effective disappear-
ance of virtually all features of pre-Roman social organisation, reli-
gion and language from most of the peninsula by the time that the
Empire came to an end is testimony to the Romans' achievement.
However much modern scholars might search for and detect elements