Late Roman Spain and Its Cities

Eight: The End of Roman Spain

Eight The End of Roman Spain 176 μ astinus’s defeat did not mean the cession of Spain to the barbarians, but it opened another period of imperial disengagement that made later attempts at restoration more difficult. The problem, as so often during the reign of Honorius, came from Spain’s position on the imperial periphery: within a year of his defeat, Castinus and with him the whole of the western empire was diverted from the Spanish situation by far more pressing matters in Italy. When Honorius died in 423, his primicerius notariorum Iohannes seized the western throne, a usurpation in which Castinus himself had a hand.1 The Spanish diocese, along with Britain, Gaul, and Africa, was neglected by John’s subsequent administration, and it was quite some time before the imperial government, under the renascent Theodosian dynasty of Valentinian III, had the leisure to once again consider Spain. It found the situation there far more parlous than it had been fifteen years before, when Constantius had commissioned Wallia to fight his Spanish battles for him. Spain in the Reign of Valentinian III John’s usurpation meant disturbance at the heart of the empire, while the subsequent struggles between Aëtius and Boniface for predomi- nance at the court of Valentinian kept the focus of imperial politics squarely on Italy. In the meantime, having been stirred into action by the imperial government, the Vandals were not slow to take advantage of that government’s distraction. From their base in Baetica, they sent expeditions to the Balearics and Mauretania Tingitana, and pillaged Cartagena in 425.2 They sacked Seville in that same year, and it is almost certain that all of these raids were seaborne. Seville, after all, could be reached in seagoing vessels, and Cartagena was readily accessible to Baetica by sea, much less so by land. This fact would seem to suggest that the Vandal base lay in or near one of the main coastal towns of Baetica like Iulia Traducta, Cádiz, or Málaga. There is no real way of telling, though the exploits of 425 do provide our earliest evidence of the Vandal seamanship that was to become infamous as the fifth century wore on. Gunderic’s regime in Baetica was a matter of plunder and extortion, rather than the government of a subject province, for though we hear of the Vandals sacking cities, nowhere do they seem to have retained control of them. The case of Seville is decisive here, for having sacked it once in 425, Gunderic had to capture it again in 428. It was at Seville that Gunderic died in that same year, to be succeeded by his brother Gaiseric.3 This Gaiseric, perhaps the greatest barbarian leader of the fifth century, was soon to become the chief threat to the peace of the Mediterranean.4 He may have defeated an imperial army soon after his accession, but the evidence is not good.5 Either way, he did not reign long on Spanish soil, for in May 429 he led his followers to Africa, where they soon carved out a Vandal kingdom that endured a hundred years.6 The one sure fact we possess about this Vandal exodus is its date. Though the number of Vandals who sailed from Iulia Traducta is also reported, the figure of eighty thousand has more typological than historical significance and we need not accept it as genuine.7 The assumption has long been that the whole Vandal people made the short journey from Baetica across the straits of Gibraltar to Tangiers and then proceeded overland to the African diocese.8 However, between their embarkation in Spain in May 429 and the siege of Hippo in the spring of 430 a full year later, we know nothing at all of their movements.9 Two points must be made. In the first place, the journey overland The End of Roman Spain 177 from Tingitania to Africa is undocumented and all logic militates against it. We have explicit evidence for Vandal seamanship before 429/430, Vandal numbers are unknown and need not have required an impossibly large number of boats, and the land route from Tingitania to Caesariensis was largely uncharted. Late imperial itineraries show that travel east from Tangiers was normally by sea: a Tingi litoribus navigatur usque Ad Portus Divinus.10 We should, if only out of common sense, presume a sea journey from...