At the close of the first Punic war, Hamilcar Barca, at the head of a Carthaginian host, crossed the strait of Gibraltar and commenced the conquest which his son Hannibal completed, and which resulted in the undisputed supremacy of Carthage throughout almost all of Spain.  This brings us to 218 B. C. and marks the beginning of the second Punic war, when the Roman legions first entered Spain.  After a struggle which lasted for thirteen years the Carthaginians were completely routed, and the country was conquered by the arms of Rome.  It was many years, however, before the inhabitants were really subdued, but eventually they became more completely Romanized than any province beyond the limits of Italy.  When brought under the iron rule of the Empire they were forced to desist from the intestinal wars in which it had been their habit to indulge, and adopting the language, laws and manners of their conquerors, they devoted themselves to industrial pursuits, and increased remarkably both in wealth and numbers.  Their fertile fields formed for a considerable time the granary of Rome, and from the metal-veined mountains an immense amount of gold and silver flowed into Roman coffers.  However, these were not voluntary offerings of the natives.  They were compelled to labor in the mines for the benefit of strangers, and thus Spain, in the early ages, was the type of Spanish America in the fifteenth and succeeding centuries, with the difference that in the first case the Spaniards were the slaves, and in the second they were the slave-holders.

For more than 300 years Spain remained under Roman rule, until in 409 ad, hordes of barbarians crossed the Pyrenees and swept over the Peninsula.  Suevi, Alani and Vandals ravaged with equal fury the cities and the open country, and brought the inhabitants to the lowest depths of misery.  They were finally subjugated by a Visigothic host, and in 415, Walia, a war-like and ambitious chief, established the West-Gothic kingdom in Spain, on the ruins of the old Roman province.  Walia concluded a treaty with the Emperor Honorius, and, putting himself at the head of the brave Goths, in a three-years’ war he destroyed or drove the barbarians from the land.  Spain, thus reconquered, was nominally subject to Rome, but soon became really independent, and began to be the seat of a Christian civilization.  This West-Gothic kingdom lasted for about three centuries, from 418 to 711, when it fell before the Moorish invasion.

Weakness of Spanish powers of resistance.