But this almost continuous repetition of wars, and some hints that Augustus makes in his testament to lost and later regained insignia, lead us to believe that neither all Roman campaigns had to end with victories, nor above all that these were really decisive. It was therefore up to Augustus and his generals to bring the last Spanish war to an end and thus complete the conquest of the peninsula. At first Augustus personally assumed the conduct of the war upon himself, and at the end of 27 he went down to Spain: but he fell ill in Tarragona, the conduct remained in Agrippa; under the leadership of this, C. Antistio and C. Furnio fought against the Cantabrians, P. Carisio against the Asturi. In the 25th, starting Augustus from Spain, the war seemed to be over; but it was rekindled immediately after, nor the successes reported by L. Elio Lamia, and, later, in 22, from Carisio and Furnio, they came to the head of the proud mountain populations, until in 19 Agrippa himself returned to take command again: this once, even through not light efforts, the resistance was subdued, and to avoid new attempts of revolt, the populations were forced to abandon their most inaccessible seats and go down to the plain. However, to ensure the tranquility of the region, a strong military garrison was placed there, the only one that remained permanently on the peninsula for the whole empire.
It is to be believed that only after the definitive submission of the Cantabrians and the Asturi did the new Augustan order apply in Spain, which on the testimony of Dio Cassius is normally dated to the year 27. For it the peninsula was divided into three provinces, two imperial, l ‘ Hispania Citerior or Tarraconensis and Lusitania, the third senatorial, the’ Hispania ulterior or Baetica: the respective borders suffered a few years later, between 7 and 2. C., some changes regarding Asturias and Callaecia (see asturias: History), first attributed to Lusitania, then definitively to Hispania citerior. And it was precisely having included in it these extreme regions, less affected, even later, by the Romanization, and in which it was always necessary to maintain a military garrison, which probably determined the permanence of this Tarraconian province among the imperial ones: because of on the other hand, its entire central and eastern part was by now, already at the time of Augustus, completely pacified like the southern province of Betica. The military garrison, completely absent from this, in which it was only occasionally necessary to send troops, when the Moors invaded it in the century. II d. C., was made up in Lusitania by auxiliary troops, in Tarraconense instead by legionary and auxiliary troops: the legions were first three, with Claudius they were reduced to two, with Nero to one: from 70 this legion was thelegio VII Gemina, already conscripted by Galba in the region and quartered in the place that took its name from it: Legio (today León).
According to INSIDEWATCH.NET, the Spanish provinces were, moreover, for over three centuries among the quietest provinces of the whole empire: no harassment of barbarians on the borders, if not the few incursions of the Mauri in the south; no uprisings of indigenous peoples, now definitively inserted in the civilization of Rome, except for some modest revolt movement of the Asturi and the Cantabrians; no travail of dynastic struggles, lacking in the peninsula of their most fertile generating environment: the army; in these struggles, when they break the unity of the empire, Spain participates by reflex, without bringing any effective contribution of fervor or passion. Its close relationship with Gaul inevitably leads it to follow the fate of this one: the invasion of the Franks and the Alamanni, who in 257, crossed Gaul and crossed the Pyrenees,
The diocletian order, while leaving Lusitania, Betica and Asturias unchanged and Callecia, which had been constituted as an autonomous province since the beginning of the century. III, divides the Tarraconense into two minor provinces, one still called with the same name, the other called Carthaginiensis ; later, during the century. IV, the Balearic Islands are still detached from Tarraconense, forming a sixth Spanish province. The Mauretania Tingitana had also been aggregated to the dioecesis Hispaniarum, dependent on the prefect of the praetorium of the Gauls, up to Diocletian, which can be said to constitute the southern border of the peninsula against the Moors of the desert.
The expansion and consolidation of the barbarian settlements in Gaul, together with the struggles between legitimate emperors and usurpers, were the causes that determined the beginning of the century. V the loss to the empire of Spain. In fact, when Constantine III was elected emperor in Britain, he set about fighting the troops of Honorius to join Gaul and Spain to his throne, and he succeeded, when his representative in Spain, Gerontius, rebelled against him, opposing another usurper. . The German barbarians, already roaming around in Gaul, Alani, Svevi, Vandals, took advantage of the ensuing struggles to descend to Spain and settle there (409).
