Italica was founded by the elder Scipio, before he left Spain (548), for his veterans who were inclined to remain in the peninsula--probably, however, not as a burgess-community, but merely as a market-place.( 2) Carteia was founded in 583 and owed its existence to the multitude of camp-children--the offspring of Roman soldiers and Spanish slaves--who grew up as slaves de jure but as free Italians de facto, and were now manumitted on behalf of the state and constituted, along with the old inhabitants of Carteia, into a Latin colony.

For nearly thirty years after the organizing of the province of the Ebro by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (575, 576)( 3) the Spanish provinces, on the whole, enjoyed the blessings of peace undisturbed, although mention is made of one or two expeditions against the Celtiberians and Lusitanians.
Lusitanian War But more serious events occurred in 600.

The Lusitanians, under the leadership of a chief called Punicus, invaded the Roman territory, defeated the two Roman governors who had united to oppose them, and slew a great number of their troops.

The Vettones (between the Tagus and the Upper Douro) were thereby induced to make common cause with the Lusitanians; and these, thus reinforced, were enabled to extend their excursions as far as the Mediterranean, and to pillage even the territory of the Bastulo-Phoenicians not far from the Roman capital New Carthage (Cartagena).

The Romans at home took the matter seriously enough to resolve on sending a consul to Spain, a step which had not been taken since 559; and, in order to accelerate the despatch of aid, they even made the new consuls enter on office two months and a half before the legal time.