Qualla: Hispania Carthaginensis

Hispania Carthaginensis: Introduction

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC0. It is one of history's quieter ironies that a Roman province should carry the name of Rome's oldest enemy. Hispania Carthaginensis, Carthaginian Spain, took its name from its capital, Carthago Nova, the New Carthage founded by the very people Rome had fought three wars to destroy. The city survives today as Cartagena on Spain's southeastern coast, and the province that answered to it once stretched from the Mediterranean shore deep into the heart of Iberia. Its name was a fossil of a vanished rivalry, worn by a province that would outlive the empire that created it only by a little.

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Hispania Carthaginensis: A Province Named for an Enemy

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC0. Carthago Nova was a Carthaginian foundation, planted on the Iberian coast during the long struggle between Carthage and Rome. When Rome finally prevailed and absorbed the peninsula, the name endured, and centuries later it lent itself to an entire province. Hispania Carthaginensi...

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Hispania Carthaginensis: Diocletian's New Map

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexandre Vigo, CC BY 3.0. The province was a deliberate creation, not an accident of settlement. In the year 298, the emperor Diocletian carved Hispania Carthaginensis out of the older and larger province of Hispania Tarraconensis as part of his sweeping reorganization of the empire's administration. Dioc...

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Hispania Carthaginensis: The Century of Invasions

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC0. For a time the province was peaceful. Then the fifth century arrived, and with it the great migrations that would dismember the western empire. From 410 to 418 the region fell under the temporary rule of the Alans, a nomadic people of Iranian origin, until the emperor Honorius an...

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Hispania Carthaginensis: What Rome Left

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC0. Behind the churn of kings and armies, the deeper Roman imprint endured. Roads, cities, language, and law had taken root during centuries of Romanization, and they did not vanish when the legions did. Cartagena, the old Carthago Nova, remained a Mediterranean crossroads long after...

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