Baetica Felix: People and Prosperity in Southern Spain from Caesar to Septimius Severus

2. Baetica Pacata

chapter two  Baetica Pacata Recent survey work in southern Spain has revealed a proliferation of rural settlements in Baetica from Augustus’ reign onward. This and the remaining chapters will seek to explain this settlement activity. The exposition and analysis will concentrate on the conventus Astigitanus, the southern conventus Cordubensis, and the southeastern conventus Hispalensis for the simple reason that it is in these portions of Baetica, representing ancient assize districts, that modern survey archaeology and excavation have been practiced with the greatest frequency and intensity since the early 1970s (see Map 2). The expansion and intensification of settlement, particularly rural, relate to a variety of factors external to the Iberian peninsula, as well as those which reflect the internal dynamics of Baetican society. A point of extreme methodological delicacy in all that follows is the relationship of the settlement pattern and the character of individual sites to the make-up of Baetican society . A rural first- through third-order site will not, for example, reveal in an explicit fashion whether the inhabitants are tenants or possessores. But the examination of the overall settlement pattern and its relationship to urban centers may provide the means to make more or less secure inferences about the social positions of those exploiting rural sites. It is the conviction of this author that an analysis of all the evidence, archaeological, epigraphical, 32 02-T2419 2/18/03 12:17 PM Page 32 and literary, suggests that agricultural tenancy in Baetica from Augustus to the first of the Severan emperors was a comparative rarity, the exceptional presence of which was dictated largely by the apparent lack of dispersed landholding by Baetican elites and by the relatively constrained sizes of most Baetican municipal territories. I return to this subject below. History and Administration The date of the creation of Hispania Ulterior Baetica is a vexing question. On the other hand, for those who enjoy puzzles, the exposition of the evidence may be pleasing. To begin with, Cassius Dio is certainly wrong to state that in 27 b.c., Augustus organized Hispania into three provinces (53.12.4–5). For some time after 27, an undivided Hispania Ulterior was under the control of an imperial legate. From 27 to 22(?), Publius Carisius Baetica Pacata 33 map two Approximate conventus boundaries of Baetica 02-T2419 2/18/03 12:17 PM Page 33 was legatus propraetore of Ulterior.1 L. Sestius P.f. Quirinalis Albinianus was consular legate of Ulterior from 22(?) to 19(?).2 Alföldy puts the legatio of Q. Acutius Faienanus over Lusitania between 19 and 1 b.c.; nevertheless, Stylow has demonstrated that Faienanus was active sometime from the Flavian era to the first two decades of the second century.3 Dio has his partisans , including Albertini, though Alföldy, drawing on Syme, offers powerful arguments for putting the division of Ulterior into Baetica and Lusitania in c. 16–13 b.c., and specifically, closer to the latter date.4 This would coincide with, and partly explain, Augustus’ presence in Spain in these years. The provincial division in this interval would also account for the reduction of the Spanish garrison from six to four legions and its placement under the unified command of the governor of Nearer Spain by c. 13 b.c. at the latest.5 Most commentators have subsequently accepted Alföldy’s dating of the creation of the province of Baetica.6 Mackie, however, holds, on uncertain grounds, that the province of Baetica came into being in 25 b.c., and suggests that Tingi and the twelve triumviral-Augustan colonies in Mauretania, including Zulil, were attached administratively to the new province at that time.7 In any case, the testimony of Pliny the Elder suggests that the main lines of the province of Lusitania were established by 12 b.c., the year of Agrippa’s death (4.118: “Agrippa has recorded that Lusitania along with Asturia and Gallaecia extends 540 miles in length and 536 miles in breadth”). There is also the problem of an adjustment in the eastern boundary of the new province of Baetica after c. 13 b.c. The difficulty here is that Pliny offers diverse figures for the east-west dimensions of Baetica: he chides both Agrippa and Augustus for offering the mistaken figure of 475 miles for the length of Baetica. The reference is to Agrippa’s geographical survey and...