History of Spain — Fall

Spain has an advantage within the history of the European community of having a national and geographical unit that match almost perfectly. The one little piece that has drifted in and out of the Iberian unity is Portugal. The Celts came all the way to the Atlantic in the pre-Roman period. The Romans discovered and colonized Iberia in the third century BC and turned Iberian/HIspania into the most profitable of all the Roman colonies. During Fall Quarter, we will study Celtic, Roman and Visigothic Spain. The Islamic invasion of Spain from the North African coast in 711 sets the stage for our Winter Quarter: Muslims in Spain, Jews in Spain and the Reconquista: Christians taking back Spain. Spring Quarter is devoted to Renaissance Spain (Ferdinand and Isabella) and the early modern period. The Greeks called the peninsula Iberia. At that time the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabo's Iberia was delineated from KeltikÄ“ by the Pyrenees and included the entire land mass south-west (he named it "west") of there. The Ancient Greeks discovered Iberia by voyaging westward. Hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term around 500 BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that "it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with Iberia." The Roman historian Polybius identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, with the Atlantic side having no name. Elsewhere he says that Saguntum is "on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia." Strabo refers to the Carretanians as people "of the Iberian stock" living in the Pyrenees, who are to be distinguished from either Celts or Celtiberians. When the Romans encountered the Greek geographers they used Iberia poetically and spoke of the Iberi, the population of Iberia. First mention was in 200 BC by the poet Quintus Ennius. The Romans had already had independent experience with the peoples on the peninsula during the long conflict with Carthage. The Roman geographers and other prose writers from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania. As they became politically interested in the former territories of Carthage the Romans came to use Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior for "near" and "far Spain". Even at that time large sections of it were Lusitania (Portugal south of Douro river and Extremadura in western Spain), Gallaecia (Northern Portugal and Galicia in Spain), Celtiberia (central Spain), Baetica (Andalusia), Cantabria (northwest Spain) and the Vascones (Basques). Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously, and distance them as near and far. He was living in a time when the peninsula was divided into Roman provinces, some belonging "to the people and the Senate" and some to "the Roman emperor." Baetia was distinguished by being the only one belonging "to the people." Whatever language may have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for Basque, protected by the Pyrenees."

REQUIRED READING

About the reading. We have an excellent one volume simple history of Spain from beginning to the present. The Mark Williams book is exactly what we search for here at the Institute: reasonable price, good clear printing. But unfortunately it is now out of print so we all need to search around and get ourselves a good used copy OR settle for Kindle version. I just checked and there are a number on amazon used at reasonable prices. Also we have about 5 copies at the Institute bookstore so if you want to stop by during the daytime, just call our office at 408 864 4060 ask them if they are open and whether there are still Mark Williams books in bookshop.

 

GREAT CITIES OF SPAIN

During our year together studying the history of Spain, we will visit various cities of Spain during part two of some of our evenings. Here is a list of the cities that we will visit.
FALL:
Week 2, Malaga
Week 3, Cartagena
Week 4, Taragona
Week 5, Mérida
Week 6, Jaén
Week 7, Sevilla
Week 9, Santiago de Compostella
WINTER:
Week 11, Córdoba
Week 12, Jerez de la Frontera, Andalusia
Week 14, Burgos
Week 15, Toledo
Week 17, Doñana National Park
Week 18, Huelva
Week 19, Leon
SPRING:
Week 21, Valladolid
Week 22, Segovia
Week 23, Zaragoza
Week 24, Ávila
Week 26, Granada
Week 29, El Escorial

The Celts were an ancient people who flourished in central Europe during the millenium preceding the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar. He fought the Gauls. The Gauls were just one variation on Celts. The Celts descended from the same Indo-European invaders who settled in Greece and Italy and gave to the whole Mediterranean world Indo-European based languages. Latin in Italy and Greek in Greece are both Indo-European languages. The two best documented sites for ancient Celti culture is La Tene on the north side of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland, and Hallstatt, in Upper Austria in the Salzkammergut of Austria. The Celts spread all over Europe including Spain. The presence of the Celts in Spain is attested by a number of Roman historians. Archaeologically, the Spanish Celts were part of the Hallstatt culture in what is now north-central Spain. The term Celtiberi appears in accounts of the Roman historians Diodorus Siculus, Appian and Martial who recognized intermarriage between Celts and native pre-Celtic Spanish Iberians after a period of continuous warfare. The fact that Spain has this ancient Celtic past is important since it unites Spain with other European nations such as France, Germany, and Britain, alll sharing these international Celtic roots.

RECOMMENDED READING

 

Carthage was a colony of the parent Phoenician civilization that grew up in present day Lebanon, parallel to the ancient Hebrews in Israel. The child outgrew the parent, and by 200 B.C. Carthage was one of the most important cities in the Mediterranean and was developing into an important challenger to Roman domination of the Mediterranean sea. One secret to the extraordinary success of Carthage was its location. The city sat on a promontory overlooking the vital Straits of Sicily that close to a width of about one hundred miles between the Tunisian coast and the coast of Sicily. Control of this sea passage grants any civilization that possesses it, control of all east-west movement in the Mediterranean. This is something every military strategist from Scipio to Eisenhower has understood. The danger of Carthage to Rome dramatically increased as the Carthaginians crossed the Mediterranean and moved into Spain. It was in Spain that the two great Mediterranean powers clashed.

 

Wikipedia: "Carthage (Latin: Carthago or Karthago, from the Phoenician Qart-ḥadašt meaning New City implying it was a 'new Tyre' (Lebanon) is a major urban center that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC. It is currently a suburb of Tunis, Tunisia, with a population (2004 Census) of 20,715. The first civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence is referred to as Punic (a form of the word "Phoenician") or Carthaginian. The city of Carthage is located on the eastern side of Lake Tunis across from the Centrex of Tunis. According to Roman legend it was founded in 814 BC by Phoenician colonists from Tyre under the leadership of Elissa (Queen Dido). It became a large and rich city and thus a major power in the Mediterranean. The resulting rivalry with Syracuse and Rome was accompanied by several wars with respective invasions of each other's homeland. Hannibal's invasion of Italy in the Second Punic War culminated in the Carthaginian victory at Cannae and led to a serious threat to the continuation of Roman rule over Italy; however, Carthage emerged from the conflict at its historical weakest after Hannibal's defeat at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. After the Third Punic War, the city was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC. However, the Romans refounded Carthage, which became the Empire's fourth most important city and the capital of the short-lived Vandal kingdom. It remained one of the most important Roman cities until the Muslim conquest when it was destroyed a second time in 698 AD."

RECOMMENDED READING

We particularly want to call to your attention the new biography of Hannibal by our own Institute Lecturer Patrick Hunt from Stanford University. It is a great book with all of Prof. Hunt's knowledge about Hannibal especially all of his first-hand experience with Hannibal's trek over the Alps into Italy. Prof. Hunt has traced every step of the journey.

Often regarded as the greatest military tactician and strategist in European history, Hannibal would later be considered one of the greatest generals of antiquity, together with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Scipio, and Pyrrhus of Epirus. Plutarch states that, when questioned by Scipio as to who was the greatest general, Hannibal is said to have replied either Alexander or Pyrrhus, then himself, or, according to another version of the event, Pyrrhus, Scipio, then himself. Military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge once famously called Hannibal the "father of strategy", because his greatest enemy, Rome, came to adopt elements of his military tactics in its own strategic arsenal. This praise has earned him a strong reputation in the modern world, and he was regarded as a great strategist by men like Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington.

RECOMMENDED READING

We have two great books about Hannibal, one by our very good friend Patrick Hunt from Stanford who has been investigating the route that Hannibal took into Italy for many years. Every year, Patrick takes a group of Stanford students with him to northern Italy and they go to work on their archaeological project to find traces of the Hannibal trip through the Alps. It is a great story both of Hannibal and of Patrick's work with these students. National Geographic is following the project and writing about it. Patrick's new book is great. David Durham has written a good book too especially about Carthage versus Rome. They are both worth reading.

Here are Professor Hunt's comments about this wonderful book: "I am passionate about this book because Hannibal has consumed almost a third of my life: 25 years tracking him across Europe and the Mediterranean, intensely studying his tactics and maneuvers in the very places he conducted his campaigns, standing on the steep scarp of the Alps looking down into Italy, walking back and forth across his battle sites, and especially noting how much Spain meant to him: Spain where he grew up and trained under his father and provided Hannibal's Iberian silver that financed his campaigns in the gathering of military intelligence in world-changing stratagems and paid his professional mercenary soldiers. In this book I boldly suggest that Rome could not have conquered the world until it had been schooled by Hannibal in how to conduct brilliant warfare weaponizing nature. I conclude this book ironically pointing out how his own birthplace of Carthage never supported Hannibal's campaigns to get Rome to leave Carthage alone."

LECTURE

In the contest with Carthage, Rome won. And one important part of the Mediterranean world that now opened to Roman domination was Spain. The Romans called it Hispania. The Roman era in Spanish history endured for more than six hundred years: from 218 B. C. to the fall of Rome itself in the 400's. During those six hundred years the roads, the aquaducts, the bridges, the cities themselves were all transformed by the new Roman conquerers so that our present-day Spain is still, to some extent, a reflection of Roman Spain. Spain was also the ultimate test of Julius Caesar and his leadership in the emerging Roman Empire.

RECOMMENDED READING

This is the best book on the subject in English.  There are used copies of this high quality paperback at about $20.00 and up.

 

If you have never read Caesar's book about the conquest of Gaul, you will find it extremely interesting, especially about the Celts (Gauls) and if you have read it before you might want to pull it down from your Institute bookshelf and look it over again.

About Julius Caesar, the best biography available is the recent, well done biography by Christian Meier. It is a big book but up to date and a great introduction to this extraordinary person.

PART TWO: Mérida

A visit to Mérida, one of the best preserved sites of Roman ruins in Spain.

From the Third Century BC, Rome was caught up in the Iberian peninsula. The success of Carthaginian Spain raised the possibility of the whole of the western Mediterranean becoming a Carthaginian lake.  And this Rome could not tolerate. So between 300 BC and 200 BC, Carthage and her colonies in Spain became the number one foreign policy issue for the Roman Republic. Scipio Africanus is the most important person in this duel.  He beats Carthage at the final battle of Zama outside of Carthage in 202 BC. Spain became the most important province in the growing state of Rome. And Spaniards  became powerful and important in the capital. Trajan (53-117) and Hadrian ( 76-138 ) were both Spaniards and are the first of a number of important non-Italian emperors. The rise of Trajan and his chosen succesor Hadrian marks an era of successful imperial leadership during which each emperor adopted his successor and brought about one hundred years of relatively peaceful Roman imperial leadership. Trajan came to power due to his military acumen and the fact that the troops respected him. He came from southern Spain, Italica in the present Andalusia. His reign is a high mark of Spanish influence in the empire. It reveals the nature of the empire in the year 100 A.D. as one of truly international federation of nations. But it also marks the decline of real representative government. This is the era of Emperors. The Senate is now less important.

 

OUR CITY THIS WEEK: JAÉN

RECOMMENDED READING

Anthony Everitt is one of the most popular writers among Insitute readers.  His biographies of Cicero and Augustus are excellent.  Here he writes about the Spanish Emperor Hadrian.

PART ONE: LECTURE

As the Roman Empire disintegrated during the 400's, provinces all over the world that had been ruled from Rome were now open to conquest by roving peoples moving across the map of Europe in search of a safe haven. Often these moving communities consisted of hundreds of thousands of travelers on the move. One such people were the Visigoths. The Visigoths were a smaller division of the larger Gothic people that had swept in from Germany as Rome collapsed. The Romanized Visigoths first emerged as a distinct people during the 4th century, initially in the Balkans, where they participated in several wars with Rome. A Visigothic army under Alaric I eventually moved into Italy and famously sacked Rome in 410. Then they moved on. First north into France and then west into Spain.

Here is a general background on the Visigoths from Wikipedia:

The Visigothic Kingdom was a Western European power in the 5th to 7th centuries, created in Gaul when the Romans lost their control of their empire. In response to the invasion of Roman Hispania of 409 by the Vandals, Alans and Suevi, Honorius, the emperor in the West, enlisted the aid of the Visigoths to regain control of the territory. In 418, Honorius rewarded his Visigothic federates by giving them land in Gallia Aquitania on which to settle. This was probably done under hospitalitas, the rules for billeting army soldiers. The settlement formed the nucleus of the future Visigothic kingdom that would eventually expand across the Pyrenees and onto the Iberian peninsula. The Visigoths' second great king, Euric, unified the various quarreling factions among the Visigoths and, in 475, forced the Roman government to grant them full independence. At his death, the Visigoths were the most powerful of the successor states to the Western Roman Empire. The Visigoths also became the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula, quickly crushing the Alans and forcing the Vandals into north Africa. By 500, the Visigothic Kingdom, centred at Toulouse, controlled Aquitania and Gallia Narbonensis and most of Hispania with the exception of the Suevic kingdom in the northwest and small areas controlled by the Basques and Cantabrians. However, in 507, the Franks under Clovis I defeated the Visigoths in the Vouillé and wrested control of Aquitaine. King Alaric II was killed in battle. After Alaric's death, Visigothic nobles spirited his heir, the child-king Amalaric, first to Narbonne, which was the last Gothic outpost in Gaul, and further across the Pyrenees into Hispania. The center of Visigothic rule shifted first to Barcelona, then inland and south to Toledo. From 511 to 526, the Visigoths were ruled by Theodoric the Great of the Ostrogoths as de jure regent for the young Amalaric. The last Arian Visigothic king, Liuvigild, conquered the Suevic kingdom in 585 and most of the northern regions (Cantabria) in 574 The kingdom survived until 711, when King Roderic (Rodrigo) was killed while opposing an invasion from the south by the Umayyad Muslims in the Battle of Guadalete on July 19. This marked the beginning of the Muslim conquest of Hispania in which most of the peninsula came under Islamic rule by 718. A Visigothic nobleman, Pelayo, is credited with beginning the Christian Reconquista of Iberia in 718, when he defeated the Umayyads in battle and established the Kingdom of Asturias in the northern part of the peninsula. Other Visigoths, refusing to adopt the Muslim faith or live under their rule, fled north to the kingdom of the Franks, and Visigoths played key roles in the empire of Charlemagne a few generations later. During their long reign in Spain, the Visigoths were responsible for the only new cities founded in Western Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries. It is certain (through contemporary Spanish accounts) that they founded four: Reccopolis, Victoriacum, Luceo, and Olite.

REQUIRED READING

Excerpts from The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville provided to you in a PDF file emailed to you.

Reading Isidore offers us an insight into the Visigothic era of Spain. Isidore was the most influential Christian in Spain from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Reconquista. We will provide you with pages from the Etymologies for the required reading. The excerpts are taken from the text in this week's recommended reading.

RECOMMENDED READING

PART TWO: PICTURES

Visigothic Art in Spain

THANKSGIVING NEXT WEEK. WE TAKE OFF THE WHOLE WEEK

PART ONE: LECTURE

The life of San Isidro de Sevilla (560-636) gives us a unique insight into Spain in those centuries just before the Islamic conquest of 711. St Isidore was born in Cartagena (named for Carthage), to Severianus and Theodora, members of an influential family who were instrumental in the political-religious maneuverering that converted the Visigothic kings from Arianism to Catholicism. The Catholic Church celebrates him and all his siblings as known saints. The story of his leadership in Seville reveals the nature of Christianity in Spain during the centuries between the fall of Rome and the conquest of the Islamic armies in 711.

Isidore was the author of a great encyclopedia of all knowledge of all things in his day called the Etymologies or Origins. It was one of the most influential books of the ancient world. It was a compendium of all that was known at the time, brought together into this encyclopedia that men of the ancient world could easily understand. Isidore's influence in history therefore derives both from his actual leadership in Spain as well as his influence as an author. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the Etymologies.

Wikipedia:

Isidore was the first Christian writer to attempt the task of compiling for his co-religionists a summa of universal knowledge, in the form of his most important work, the Etymologiae It is also known by classicists as the Origines (the standard abbreviation being Orig.). This encyclopedia - the first such Christian epitome - formed a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 volumes. In it, as Isidore entered his own terse digest of Roman handbooks, miscellanies and compendia, he continued the trend towards abridgements and summaries that had characterised Roman learning in Late Antiquity. In the process, many fragments of classical learning are preserved which otherwise would have been hopelessly lost; "in fact, in the majority of his works, including the Origines, he contributes little more than the mortar which connects excerpts from other authors, as if he was aware of his deficiencies and had more confidence in the stilus maiorum than his own" his translator Katherine Nell MacFarlane remarks; on the other hand, some of these fragments were lost in the first place because Isidore's work was so highly regarded - Braulio called it quecunque fere sciri debentur, "practically everything that it is necessary to know" - that it superseded the use of many individual works of the classics themselves, which were not recopied and have therefore been lost: "all secular knowledge that was of use to the Christian scholar had been winnowed out and contained in one handy volume; the scholar need search no further". The fame of this work imparted a new impetus to encyclopedic writing, which bore abundant fruit in the subsequent centuries of the Middle Ages. It was the most popular compendium in medieval libraries. It was printed in at least 10 editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Isidore's continued popularity in the Renaissance. Until the 12th century brought translations from Arabic sources, Isidore transmitted what western Europeans remembered of the works of Aristotle and other Greeks, although he understood only a limited amount of Greek. The Etymologiae was much copied, particularly into medieval bestiaries.

RECOMMENDED READING

PART TWO: PICTURES

Images of Isidore and his work.

PART ONE: LECTURE

Saint James is the Patron Saint of Spain and according to legend, his remains are held in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (Spain). The traditional pilgrimage to the grave of the saint, known as the "Way of St. James", has been the most popular pilgrimage for Western European Catholics from the early Middle Ages onwards. 125,141 pilgrims registered in 2008 as having completed the final 100 km walk (200 km by bicycle) to Santiago to qualify for a Compostela.[4] When 25 July falls on a Sunday, it is a "Jubilee" year, and a special east door is opened for entrance into the Santiago Cathedral. Jubilee years fall every 6, 5, 6, and 11 years. In the 2004 Jubilee year, 179,944,[5] pilgrims received a Compostela. In the Jubilee years of 2010 and 2011, the number of pilgrims is expected to exceed this figure. The feast day of St James is celebrated on 25 July on the liturgical calendars of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and certain Protestant churches.

The story of James is a mix of New Testament precision and less precise myths and stories of travels and preaching. The most important story for Spain is the account of James' time spent in Spain. And his miraculous reappearance and burial in Santiago de Compostela.

RECOMMENDED READING:

PART TWO: Santiago de Compostela

A photographic journey to Santiago de Compostela.

PART ONE: LECTURE

In the year of 700 A.D., Europe and Spain were on the threshold of a dramatic new historical era that would be driven by the Islamic invasion that was about to come surging cross the Mediterranean at Gibraltar. This new group of peoples who would come from various north African communities carrying the new religion of Islam would challenge the whole structure of Christian Spain and would push beyond Spain deep into France. During the first century of the Islamic presence in Spain, it often seemed that this new Islamic empire was unstoppable and that eventually it would spread to all of Europe. Then during the eighth century, a new political force in European politics emerged from France: the Carolingians. This Germano-French dynasty with its roots in Burgundy and the Rhine valley organized the larger French territory and stopped the Islamic surge, first at Poitiers, later in Spain itself and along the border lands.

CHRISTMAS VACATION

no classes for 3 weeks
Week of Monday Dec 18
Week of Monday Dec 25
Week of Monday Jan 1, 2024

Classes Begin

Week of Monday Jan 8, 2024.

Spain has an advantage within the history of the European community of having a national and geographical unit that match almost perfectly. The one little piece that has drifted in and out of the Iberian unity is Portugal. The Celts came all the way to the Atlantic in the pre-Roman period. The Romans discovered and colonized Iberia in the third century BC and turned Iberian/HIspania into the most profitable of all the Roman colonies. During Fall Quarter, we will study Celtic, Roman and Visigothic Spain. The Islamic invasion of Spain from the North African coast in 711 sets the stage for our Winter Quarter: Muslims in Spain, Jews in Spain and the Reconquista: Christians taking back Spain. Spring Quarter is devoted to Renaissance Spain (Ferdinand and Isabella) and the early modern period. The Greeks called the peninsula Iberia. At that time the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabo's Iberia was delineated from KeltikÄ“ by the Pyrenees and included the entire land mass south-west (he named it "west") of there. The Ancient Greeks discovered Iberia by voyaging westward. Hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term around 500 BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that "it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with Iberia." The Roman historian Polybius identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, with the Atlantic side having no name. Elsewhere he says that Saguntum is "on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia." Strabo refers to the Carretanians as people "of the Iberian stock" living in the Pyrenees, who are to be distinguished from either Celts or Celtiberians. When the Romans encountered the Greek geographers they used Iberia poetically and spoke of the Iberi, the population of Iberia. First mention was in 200 BC by the poet Quintus Ennius. The Romans had already had independent experience with the peoples on the peninsula during the long conflict with Carthage. The Roman geographers and other prose writers from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania. As they became politically interested in the former territories of Carthage the Romans came to use Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior for "near" and "far Spain". Even at that time large sections of it were Lusitania (Portugal south of Douro river and Extremadura in western Spain), Gallaecia (Northern Portugal and Galicia in Spain), Celtiberia (central Spain), Baetica (Andalusia), Cantabria (northwest Spain) and the Vascones (Basques). Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously, and distance them as near and far. He was living in a time when the peninsula was divided into Roman provinces, some belonging "to the people and the Senate" and some to "the Roman emperor." Baetia was distinguished by being the only one belonging "to the people." Whatever language may have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for Basque, protected by the Pyrenees."

REQUIRED READING

About the reading. We have an excellent one volume simple history of Spain from beginning to the present. The Mark Williams book is exactly what we search for here at the Institute: reasonable price, good clear printing. But unfortunately it is now out of print so we all need to search around and get ourselves a good used copy OR settle for Kindle version. I just checked and there are a number on amazon used at reasonable prices. Also we have about 5 copies at the Institute bookstore so if you want to stop by during the daytime, just call our office at 408 864 4060 ask them if they are open and whether there are still Mark Williams books in bookshop.

 

GREAT CITIES OF SPAIN

During our year together studying the history of Spain, we will visit various cities of Spain during part two of some of our evenings. Here is a list of the cities that we will visit.
FALL:
Week 2, Malaga
Week 3, Cartagena
Week 4, Taragona
Week 5, Mérida
Week 6, Jaén
Week 7, Sevilla
Week 9, Santiago de Compostella
WINTER:
Week 11, Córdoba
Week 12, Jerez de la Frontera, Andalusia
Week 14, Burgos
Week 15, Toledo
Week 17, Doñana National Park
Week 18, Huelva
Week 19, Leon
SPRING:
Week 21, Valladolid
Week 22, Segovia
Week 23, Zaragoza
Week 24, Ávila
Week 26, Granada
Week 29, El Escorial

The Celts were an ancient people who flourished in central Europe during the millenium preceding the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar. He fought the Gauls. The Gauls were just one variation on Celts. The Celts descended from the same Indo-European invaders who settled in Greece and Italy and gave to the whole Mediterranean world Indo-European based languages. Latin in Italy and Greek in Greece are both Indo-European languages. The two best documented sites for ancient Celti culture is La Tene on the north side of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland, and Hallstatt, in Upper Austria in the Salzkammergut of Austria. The Celts spread all over Europe including Spain. The presence of the Celts in Spain is attested by a number of Roman historians. Archaeologically, the Spanish Celts were part of the Hallstatt culture in what is now north-central Spain. The term Celtiberi appears in accounts of the Roman historians Diodorus Siculus, Appian and Martial who recognized intermarriage between Celts and native pre-Celtic Spanish Iberians after a period of continuous warfare. The fact that Spain has this ancient Celtic past is important since it unites Spain with other European nations such as France, Germany, and Britain, alll sharing these international Celtic roots.

RECOMMENDED READING

 

Carthage was a colony of the parent Phoenician civilization that grew up in present day Lebanon, parallel to the ancient Hebrews in Israel. The child outgrew the parent, and by 200 B.C. Carthage was one of the most important cities in the Mediterranean and was developing into an important challenger to Roman domination of the Mediterranean sea. One secret to the extraordinary success of Carthage was its location. The city sat on a promontory overlooking the vital Straits of Sicily that close to a width of about one hundred miles between the Tunisian coast and the coast of Sicily. Control of this sea passage grants any civilization that possesses it, control of all east-west movement in the Mediterranean. This is something every military strategist from Scipio to Eisenhower has understood. The danger of Carthage to Rome dramatically increased as the Carthaginians crossed the Mediterranean and moved into Spain. It was in Spain that the two great Mediterranean powers clashed.

 

Wikipedia: "Carthage (Latin: Carthago or Karthago, from the Phoenician Qart-ḥadašt meaning New City implying it was a 'new Tyre' (Lebanon) is a major urban center that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC. It is currently a suburb of Tunis, Tunisia, with a population (2004 Census) of 20,715. The first civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence is referred to as Punic (a form of the word "Phoenician") or Carthaginian. The city of Carthage is located on the eastern side of Lake Tunis across from the Centrex of Tunis. According to Roman legend it was founded in 814 BC by Phoenician colonists from Tyre under the leadership of Elissa (Queen Dido). It became a large and rich city and thus a major power in the Mediterranean. The resulting rivalry with Syracuse and Rome was accompanied by several wars with respective invasions of each other's homeland. Hannibal's invasion of Italy in the Second Punic War culminated in the Carthaginian victory at Cannae and led to a serious threat to the continuation of Roman rule over Italy; however, Carthage emerged from the conflict at its historical weakest after Hannibal's defeat at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. After the Third Punic War, the city was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC. However, the Romans refounded Carthage, which became the Empire's fourth most important city and the capital of the short-lived Vandal kingdom. It remained one of the most important Roman cities until the Muslim conquest when it was destroyed a second time in 698 AD."

RECOMMENDED READING

We particularly want to call to your attention the new biography of Hannibal by our own Institute Lecturer Patrick Hunt from Stanford University. It is a great book with all of Prof. Hunt's knowledge about Hannibal especially all of his first-hand experience with Hannibal's trek over the Alps into Italy. Prof. Hunt has traced every step of the journey.

Often regarded as the greatest military tactician and strategist in European history, Hannibal would later be considered one of the greatest generals of antiquity, together with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Scipio, and Pyrrhus of Epirus. Plutarch states that, when questioned by Scipio as to who was the greatest general, Hannibal is said to have replied either Alexander or Pyrrhus, then himself, or, according to another version of the event, Pyrrhus, Scipio, then himself. Military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge once famously called Hannibal the "father of strategy", because his greatest enemy, Rome, came to adopt elements of his military tactics in its own strategic arsenal. This praise has earned him a strong reputation in the modern world, and he was regarded as a great strategist by men like Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington.

RECOMMENDED READING

We have two great books about Hannibal, one by our very good friend Patrick Hunt from Stanford who has been investigating the route that Hannibal took into Italy for many years. Every year, Patrick takes a group of Stanford students with him to northern Italy and they go to work on their archaeological project to find traces of the Hannibal trip through the Alps. It is a great story both of Hannibal and of Patrick's work with these students. National Geographic is following the project and writing about it. Patrick's new book is great. David Durham has written a good book too especially about Carthage versus Rome. They are both worth reading.

Here are Professor Hunt's comments about this wonderful book: "I am passionate about this book because Hannibal has consumed almost a third of my life: 25 years tracking him across Europe and the Mediterranean, intensely studying his tactics and maneuvers in the very places he conducted his campaigns, standing on the steep scarp of the Alps looking down into Italy, walking back and forth across his battle sites, and especially noting how much Spain meant to him: Spain where he grew up and trained under his father and provided Hannibal's Iberian silver that financed his campaigns in the gathering of military intelligence in world-changing stratagems and paid his professional mercenary soldiers. In this book I boldly suggest that Rome could not have conquered the world until it had been schooled by Hannibal in how to conduct brilliant warfare weaponizing nature. I conclude this book ironically pointing out how his own birthplace of Carthage never supported Hannibal's campaigns to get Rome to leave Carthage alone."

LECTURE

In the contest with Carthage, Rome won. And one important part of the Mediterranean world that now opened to Roman domination was Spain. The Romans called it Hispania. The Roman era in Spanish history endured for more than six hundred years: from 218 B. C. to the fall of Rome itself in the 400's. During those six hundred years the roads, the aquaducts, the bridges, the cities themselves were all transformed by the new Roman conquerers so that our present-day Spain is still, to some extent, a reflection of Roman Spain. Spain was also the ultimate test of Julius Caesar and his leadership in the emerging Roman Empire.

RECOMMENDED READING

This is the best book on the subject in English.  There are used copies of this high quality paperback at about $20.00 and up.

 

If you have never read Caesar's book about the conquest of Gaul, you will find it extremely interesting, especially about the Celts (Gauls) and if you have read it before you might want to pull it down from your Institute bookshelf and look it over again.

About Julius Caesar, the best biography available is the recent, well done biography by Christian Meier. It is a big book but up to date and a great introduction to this extraordinary person.

PART TWO: Mérida

A visit to Mérida, one of the best preserved sites of Roman ruins in Spain.

From the Third Century BC, Rome was caught up in the Iberian peninsula. The success of Carthaginian Spain raised the possibility of the whole of the western Mediterranean becoming a Carthaginian lake.  And this Rome could not tolerate. So between 300 BC and 200 BC, Carthage and her colonies in Spain became the number one foreign policy issue for the Roman Republic. Scipio Africanus is the most important person in this duel.  He beats Carthage at the final battle of Zama outside of Carthage in 202 BC. Spain became the most important province in the growing state of Rome. And Spaniards  became powerful and important in the capital. Trajan (53-117) and Hadrian ( 76-138 ) were both Spaniards and are the first of a number of important non-Italian emperors. The rise of Trajan and his chosen succesor Hadrian marks an era of successful imperial leadership during which each emperor adopted his successor and brought about one hundred years of relatively peaceful Roman imperial leadership. Trajan came to power due to his military acumen and the fact that the troops respected him. He came from southern Spain, Italica in the present Andalusia. His reign is a high mark of Spanish influence in the empire. It reveals the nature of the empire in the year 100 A.D. as one of truly international federation of nations. But it also marks the decline of real representative government. This is the era of Emperors. The Senate is now less important.

 

OUR CITY THIS WEEK: JAÉN

RECOMMENDED READING

Anthony Everitt is one of the most popular writers among Insitute readers.  His biographies of Cicero and Augustus are excellent.  Here he writes about the Spanish Emperor Hadrian.

PART ONE: LECTURE

As the Roman Empire disintegrated during the 400's, provinces all over the world that had been ruled from Rome were now open to conquest by roving peoples moving across the map of Europe in search of a safe haven. Often these moving communities consisted of hundreds of thousands of travelers on the move. One such people were the Visigoths. The Visigoths were a smaller division of the larger Gothic people that had swept in from Germany as Rome collapsed. The Romanized Visigoths first emerged as a distinct people during the 4th century, initially in the Balkans, where they participated in several wars with Rome. A Visigothic army under Alaric I eventually moved into Italy and famously sacked Rome in 410. Then they moved on. First north into France and then west into Spain.

Here is a general background on the Visigoths from Wikipedia:

The Visigothic Kingdom was a Western European power in the 5th to 7th centuries, created in Gaul when the Romans lost their control of their empire. In response to the invasion of Roman Hispania of 409 by the Vandals, Alans and Suevi, Honorius, the emperor in the West, enlisted the aid of the Visigoths to regain control of the territory. In 418, Honorius rewarded his Visigothic federates by giving them land in Gallia Aquitania on which to settle. This was probably done under hospitalitas, the rules for billeting army soldiers. The settlement formed the nucleus of the future Visigothic kingdom that would eventually expand across the Pyrenees and onto the Iberian peninsula. The Visigoths' second great king, Euric, unified the various quarreling factions among the Visigoths and, in 475, forced the Roman government to grant them full independence. At his death, the Visigoths were the most powerful of the successor states to the Western Roman Empire. The Visigoths also became the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula, quickly crushing the Alans and forcing the Vandals into north Africa. By 500, the Visigothic Kingdom, centred at Toulouse, controlled Aquitania and Gallia Narbonensis and most of Hispania with the exception of the Suevic kingdom in the northwest and small areas controlled by the Basques and Cantabrians. However, in 507, the Franks under Clovis I defeated the Visigoths in the Vouillé and wrested control of Aquitaine. King Alaric II was killed in battle. After Alaric's death, Visigothic nobles spirited his heir, the child-king Amalaric, first to Narbonne, which was the last Gothic outpost in Gaul, and further across the Pyrenees into Hispania. The center of Visigothic rule shifted first to Barcelona, then inland and south to Toledo. From 511 to 526, the Visigoths were ruled by Theodoric the Great of the Ostrogoths as de jure regent for the young Amalaric. The last Arian Visigothic king, Liuvigild, conquered the Suevic kingdom in 585 and most of the northern regions (Cantabria) in 574 The kingdom survived until 711, when King Roderic (Rodrigo) was killed while opposing an invasion from the south by the Umayyad Muslims in the Battle of Guadalete on July 19. This marked the beginning of the Muslim conquest of Hispania in which most of the peninsula came under Islamic rule by 718. A Visigothic nobleman, Pelayo, is credited with beginning the Christian Reconquista of Iberia in 718, when he defeated the Umayyads in battle and established the Kingdom of Asturias in the northern part of the peninsula. Other Visigoths, refusing to adopt the Muslim faith or live under their rule, fled north to the kingdom of the Franks, and Visigoths played key roles in the empire of Charlemagne a few generations later. During their long reign in Spain, the Visigoths were responsible for the only new cities founded in Western Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries. It is certain (through contemporary Spanish accounts) that they founded four: Reccopolis, Victoriacum, Luceo, and Olite.

REQUIRED READING

Excerpts from The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville provided to you in a PDF file emailed to you.

Reading Isidore offers us an insight into the Visigothic era of Spain. Isidore was the most influential Christian in Spain from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Reconquista. We will provide you with pages from the Etymologies for the required reading. The excerpts are taken from the text in this week's recommended reading.

RECOMMENDED READING

PART TWO: PICTURES

Visigothic Art in Spain

THANKSGIVING NEXT WEEK. WE TAKE OFF THE WHOLE WEEK

PART ONE: LECTURE

The life of San Isidro de Sevilla (560-636) gives us a unique insight into Spain in those centuries just before the Islamic conquest of 711. St Isidore was born in Cartagena (named for Carthage), to Severianus and Theodora, members of an influential family who were instrumental in the political-religious maneuverering that converted the Visigothic kings from Arianism to Catholicism. The Catholic Church celebrates him and all his siblings as known saints. The story of his leadership in Seville reveals the nature of Christianity in Spain during the centuries between the fall of Rome and the conquest of the Islamic armies in 711.

Isidore was the author of a great encyclopedia of all knowledge of all things in his day called the Etymologies or Origins. It was one of the most influential books of the ancient world. It was a compendium of all that was known at the time, brought together into this encyclopedia that men of the ancient world could easily understand. Isidore's influence in history therefore derives both from his actual leadership in Spain as well as his influence as an author. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the Etymologies.

Wikipedia:

Isidore was the first Christian writer to attempt the task of compiling for his co-religionists a summa of universal knowledge, in the form of his most important work, the Etymologiae It is also known by classicists as the Origines (the standard abbreviation being Orig.). This encyclopedia - the first such Christian epitome - formed a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 volumes. In it, as Isidore entered his own terse digest of Roman handbooks, miscellanies and compendia, he continued the trend towards abridgements and summaries that had characterised Roman learning in Late Antiquity. In the process, many fragments of classical learning are preserved which otherwise would have been hopelessly lost; "in fact, in the majority of his works, including the Origines, he contributes little more than the mortar which connects excerpts from other authors, as if he was aware of his deficiencies and had more confidence in the stilus maiorum than his own" his translator Katherine Nell MacFarlane remarks; on the other hand, some of these fragments were lost in the first place because Isidore's work was so highly regarded - Braulio called it quecunque fere sciri debentur, "practically everything that it is necessary to know" - that it superseded the use of many individual works of the classics themselves, which were not recopied and have therefore been lost: "all secular knowledge that was of use to the Christian scholar had been winnowed out and contained in one handy volume; the scholar need search no further". The fame of this work imparted a new impetus to encyclopedic writing, which bore abundant fruit in the subsequent centuries of the Middle Ages. It was the most popular compendium in medieval libraries. It was printed in at least 10 editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Isidore's continued popularity in the Renaissance. Until the 12th century brought translations from Arabic sources, Isidore transmitted what western Europeans remembered of the works of Aristotle and other Greeks, although he understood only a limited amount of Greek. The Etymologiae was much copied, particularly into medieval bestiaries.

RECOMMENDED READING

PART TWO: PICTURES

Images of Isidore and his work.

PART ONE: LECTURE

Saint James is the Patron Saint of Spain and according to legend, his remains are held in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (Spain). The traditional pilgrimage to the grave of the saint, known as the "Way of St. James", has been the most popular pilgrimage for Western European Catholics from the early Middle Ages onwards. 125,141 pilgrims registered in 2008 as having completed the final 100 km walk (200 km by bicycle) to Santiago to qualify for a Compostela.[4] When 25 July falls on a Sunday, it is a "Jubilee" year, and a special east door is opened for entrance into the Santiago Cathedral. Jubilee years fall every 6, 5, 6, and 11 years. In the 2004 Jubilee year, 179,944,[5] pilgrims received a Compostela. In the Jubilee years of 2010 and 2011, the number of pilgrims is expected to exceed this figure. The feast day of St James is celebrated on 25 July on the liturgical calendars of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and certain Protestant churches.

The story of James is a mix of New Testament precision and less precise myths and stories of travels and preaching. The most important story for Spain is the account of James' time spent in Spain. And his miraculous reappearance and burial in Santiago de Compostela.

RECOMMENDED READING:

PART TWO: Santiago de Compostela

A photographic journey to Santiago de Compostela.

PART ONE: LECTURE

In the year of 700 A.D., Europe and Spain were on the threshold of a dramatic new historical era that would be driven by the Islamic invasion that was about to come surging cross the Mediterranean at Gibraltar. This new group of peoples who would come from various north African communities carrying the new religion of Islam would challenge the whole structure of Christian Spain and would push beyond Spain deep into France. During the first century of the Islamic presence in Spain, it often seemed that this new Islamic empire was unstoppable and that eventually it would spread to all of Europe. Then during the eighth century, a new political force in European politics emerged from France: the Carolingians. This Germano-French dynasty with its roots in Burgundy and the Rhine valley organized the larger French territory and stopped the Islamic surge, first at Poitiers, later in Spain itself and along the border lands.

CHRISTMAS VACATION

no classes for 3 weeks
Week of Monday Dec 18
Week of Monday Dec 25
Week of Monday Jan 1, 2024

Classes Begin

Week of Monday Jan 8, 2024.