The Romanisation of Hispania
La romanización de Hispania
218 BC–409. Romanisation is the name historians give to the slow process by which the peoples of the peninsula became Roman in language, law, religion and daily life.
What happened
Romanisation is the name historians give to the slow process by which the peoples of the peninsula became Roman in language, law, religion and daily life. It began with soldiers and traders after 218 BC, moved faster once Augustus ended the Cantabrian wars in 19 BC and founded veteran colonies such as Mérida, and was carried by roads, planned cities, Latin schools and the grant of citizenship. By the second century Hispania was producing emperors and writers, and by the fourth it was Christian. The only pre-Roman language to survive was Basque. Everywhere else, the spoken Latin of soldiers and settlers became the ancestor of Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Portuguese.
Events along the way
- 218–19 BC: Rome lands in Hispania
- 133 BC: The fall of Numantia
- 25 BC: Augustus founds Mérida
- 98: Trajan, an emperor from Hispania
Sources
- Second Punic War — World History Encyclopedia
- Las Médulas: vocabulario y conceptos – Guerras Cántabras — Museo Virtual de la Ciencia, CSIC
- Conjunto Monumental de Mérida — Consorcio de la Ciudad Monumental de Mérida
- Trajan — World History Encyclopedia