Of course, after 133 the Romanization of the peninsula, to which the Balearic Islands conquered by Q. Cecilio Metello Balearico were added in 123, the enhancement of its mineral, agricultural and commercial wealth, and therefore its ever deeper insertion into the life of the Roman state, made rapid and significant progress; the arrangement of the great coastal road that from Gallia Narbonense, crossing the Pyrenees, went down to Tarragona andNova Carthago. Indeed, even after the Numantine war there are recollections of new insurrections of the Celtiberians: the most serious among them was probably that of the Arevaci in 98, which the consul T. Didio was sent to tame; but it seems to be deduced from Appiano himself that both this, and the others mentioned by him, had an episodic character and limited importance. More often, on the other hand, there are records of campaigns against the Lusitanians in Further Spain, where in fact the conquest was still to be consolidated and extended towards the west: victories were won over them by Q. Servilio Cepione in 107, P. Cornelio Dolabella in 98, P. Licinio Crassus in 93: consuls were sometimes destined to conduct these campaigns, rather than the normal praetors: so it is to be believed that some of them imported military actions and the use of rather considerable troops. But with the century. I a. C. to the disturbance still underway caused by the wars against the indigenous, is added that produced by the reflections and echoes of the civil wars, which the close link of the peninsula with Italy and with Rome could not help but be affected by it, and much more seriously than in other regions. However, it should be noted that, despite the damage and disorder caused by these wars, neither the gradual subjugation of the Iberian tribes nor, above all, their assimilation to Rome and its civilization stopped.
Moreover, according to HEALTHVV.COM, the commonality of life between Iberians and Romans militants in the same army, could not but exert a decisive influence on the soul and habits of the Spanish populations, which moreover the final victory of Pompey, celebrated by the victor with the erection of a trophy in the Pyrenees, strengthened their bond of dependence in Rome. Thus it is that we see little by little the insurrection and resistance movements in the peninsula fade, or that these are now limited almost only to the extreme western or north-western regions, still barely touched by the action of Rome. In 70 and 69 they celebrated the triumph over Spain respectively L. Afranio, former legate of Pompeo, and M. Pupio Pisone Frugi; more extensive was certainly the action carried out by Caesar during his government of the Further province in 61,Brigantium(A Coruña); a new insurrection of the Vaccei in the Hither repressed Metello Nepote in 56. The following year, the Trebonia law, with regard to the agreements made at the Lucca convention, gave Pompeo the government of both Spanish provinces for five years. No wonder, therefore, that at the outbreak of the struggle between Caesar and Pompey, the peninsula, which had already seen both victorious, split between the two: for the first it was the Ulterior, for the second the Hither.: there the legates Afranio and Petreio had gathered such a large army, that Caesar decided to face it even before the one Pompey had under him in Greece: by now the trees, numerous in both armies, but above all in Pompey’s, form an element of them, they no longer represent a party fighting on its behalf against Rome. The battle of Lérida decided the defeat of the Pompeians, but it was still in Spain that they returned to gather their last resistance, after Pharsalus and after Tapso, favored in this by the ineptitude or bad governance of Caesar’s legates. So Caesar returned once again to the peninsula, to put an end to the Pompeian opposition with Munda’s victory. The effect of the victory was great, not only because many cities certainly passed over to the side of the dictator, but because his stay in the region, and the providences he took in favor of it, especially the deduction of numerous colonies, they pushed and determined more actively than ever its complete assimilation to Roman civilization. The attempt made by Sextus Pompey after Munda, to keep alive the struggle against Caesar’s party, it was truncated after the death of the dictator with the recall of Sesto from Spain decided by the senate. Once the second triumvirate was constituted, the provinces were assigned first to Lepidus, then, after Philippi, to Octavian; of limited importance were the riots aroused in the south by Bogud of Mauretania, in agreement with Antonio. In the north, however, the wars of submission of the last part of the peninsula that still remained independent from Rome continued almost uninterrupted, especially in the region of the Asturi and the Cantabrians: the triumphal glories remind us of the victories of Lepidus in 43, of Cn. Domizio Calvino in 36, by Norbano Flacco in 34, by L. Marcio Filippo and Appio Claudio Pulcro between 34 and 29, by C. Calvisio Sabino in 28, by Sesto Appuleio in 26; from other sources we have news of successes reported in 29 by T. Statilio Tauro on the same populations.
