To understand the actions of the Romans in Spain in the 140 years which followed the declaration of war against Hannibal in 218 it is essential to be aware of the context in which those actions took place. The peoples they found there and, perhaps even more importantly, the structure of the land in which they fought were more than a mere back-drop to the events of the period. They, more than anything else, determined what it was possible for a Roman commander to do, and so shaped the activity and policy of the men who were to create Roman Spain.

The land

In no part of the Roman world is the connection between physical geography and political and military control closer or more important for the understanding of their methods and ideas than in Spain. The dominant feature of the geography of the peninsula is the great central tablelands, the mesetas, which cover about one-half of the total land area. To the north these are bounded by the range of the Cantabrian mountains, which extends eastwards to form the Pyrenees; before this, however, the edge of the meseta has turned south-eastwards along the line of the Sierra de la Demanda, which, after a gap created by the valley of the River Jalón, continues in a broadening cluster of sierras to reach the sea just north of Sagunto, at the northern end of the coastal plain of Valencia.