The very borders of the two provinces created in 197, whose government was given to two praetors, added from that year to those who were normally elected at first, were certainly not defined, if not on the side of the sea, and for the Hither towards the Pyrenees. For the Hither itself towards the west, for the Further towards the west and towards the north, those borders were marked only by the limit of the area of Roman influence, an uncertain limit, against which the border tribes or beyond the border continually pressed with the intent to make them retreat, and that instead the Romans, taking occasion from the rebellions or from the incursions of the indigenous people, wanted to push ever further forward.
The point where the two provinces were touched: the sea the territory of Nova Carthago, who was in the limits of the H. Citerior, and actually constituted, at the beginning, the normal residence of the governor, and towards the interior the saltus Castulonensis, a region itself far from peaceful for the Romans. The seat of the governor of ‘ H. ulterior seems to have been Hispalis first, then, after the foundation of Corduba, the latter.
Throughout the republican period the two provinces normally remained divided: their reunion took place only at some particular moment, for transitory reasons: that is, for the first time during the Macedonian war (from 171 to 168 BC), more late when the lex Trebonica conferred special powers on Pompeo for the whole peninsula (from 54 to 49).
According to HEALTH-BEAUTY-GUIDES.COM, the years following the constitution of the provinces were still years of hard struggle for the Romans, prevented by other wars in Italy, the insurrection of all the Iberian tribes broke out in the summer of 197, nor the partial successes reported in the following years by the Roman governors, one of whom he lost his life, they had managed to tame it entirely, if in 195 the senate decided to send to the peninsula, in addition to the two normal praetors, a consul, M. Porcio Cato, with a stronger army. Cato, having landed in Emporiae, defeated the rebels of the Hither not far from it, imposing them hostages; after an action, more than anything else of a demonstrative nature, in the Ulterior, where the attempt to extend the Roman dominion up to Anas remained in vain, and where Turdetani and Celtiberi continued to evade this dominion, Cato returned to the north, crossed the land of the Celtibers, cunningly induced many cities of the Ebro valley to tear down their walls, then embarked again for the ‘Italy. After Cato’s departure, the rebellion resumed with equal intensity; in the Ulverso for the first time the Lusitanians appeared from the west, who were beaten by Fr. Cornelio Scipione Nasica. In the two-year period 193-191 the praetors C. Flaminio and M. Fulvio Nobiliore themselves took the offensive, perhaps in combined action, successfully beating the territories of the Oretani, of the Carpetani, of which the capital Toledo, of the Celtiberi, of the Vettoni and Vaccei. A return of the Lusitani, from which the successor of Nobiliore, L. Emilio Paolo, first touched a defeat,
After about two years of relative tranquility, in 187, Lusitani and Celtiberi rose again: the war lasted for several years, despite the Roman praetors, who had with them a strong army of about fifty thousand men, plus the Iberian auxiliaries against the rebels., had even achieved some victory of no small moment. Particularly active in the fight against Rome were the Celtiberians of the center of the peninsula. In 181 Q. Fulvio Flacco was sent against them, who penetrated their territory and humiliated their boldness, so as to be able to announce to the Senate, with exaggerated confidence, their definitive conquest. He was succeeded by Flacco in 180 Ti. Sempronio Gracchus, who tenaciously pursued the campaign against the Celtiberians, while his colleague from the Ulterior province, L. Postumio Albino, moved from south to north, towards the country of the Vaccei. Military successes, added to those previously reported by Fulvio Flacco, and shrewd politics allowed Gracchus to induce some of the major tribes of the Celtibers, Titti, Belli, Lusoni and Arevaci, to make a pact with Rome, for which they recognized the authority of the republic (179 Peace, and with it the flourishing of civil life, seemed assured for a fairly long period of time to the regions now subject to Rome: Gracchus himself, before leaving, founded the colony ofGracchuris. The Fasti trionfali and Livio still recall some military actions in the following years; but everything leads us to believe that these were actions of limited importance; on the other hand, the repeated memories that for this same period of time we have of accusations and trials for extortion against the governors of the province, make us believe that in peace and peace these governors took advantage to administer the subject lands, so rich in resources especially mineral, more to his own advantage than to that of the republic. Hence the seeds of the revolt fermented more than ever in the twenty-five years between 179 and 154. It was in this year that the Celtiberian war began which Polybius calls πύρινος πόλεμπς, war, which, through various events and very serious struggles extended to the whole peninsula,
