The Roman Conquest of Spain

The Iberian Peninsula has seen plenty of conflict in its long history. The first reasonably well-recorded period of such conflict was the Roman conquest. In due course, the area comprising modern Spain and Portugal became one of the most succesfully Romanised areas in the Empire. But it took two centuries of intermittent warfare to pacify the entire Peninsula. Most research has focused on the latter stages of this conquest, or on the time of consolidation, Roman colonisation and Romanisation. The initial conquest occurred under entirely different circumstances during the Second Punic War. Despite its later achievements in the civil sphere, this initial phase was one of brutal conquest, in which a high price was paid by both Roman, Celt-Iberians and Carthaginians.