Preface

Summary

The collection of the material on which this book is based began as part of the preparation of an Oxford D. Phil, thesis in 1968. The completion of that thesis four years later was, as it turned out, only a stage in a prolonged process of investigation and interpretation, whose results are presented here. In 1968 I proposed to look at all the overseas development of the Roman empire in the second century BC, and it was Sir Ronald Syme, as Camden Professor in Oxford, who suggested that I should begin with Spain, as that might prove the most fruitful area for my purpose. Seventeen years later, I have no reason to contest the wisdom of that advice, and to him and to Martin Frederiksen, who supervised my research with characteristic care and sustaining enthusiasm, I owe even more than I realised at the time.

The extended production of this book could never have been achieved without the help, encouragement and critical good sense of a host of friends, colleagues and pupils too numerous to mention; but I particularly wish to thank Michel Austin, Jill Harries and Geoffrey Rickman, my colleagues in St Andrews; Michael Crawford and Andrew Lintott in England; Professor P. G. Walsh of Glasgow, whose reading of one draft removed many errors; Amanda Pugh, who struggled with a hideous manuscript to produce a legible typescript; and above all my wife, Patricia Richardson, who has lived with Roman Spain for as long as I have. My thanks are also due to the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy, whose generosity made possible extended visits to Italy and Spain in 1979 and 1983 respectively.