‘Rich in purple-clad rulers’: Roman and post-Roman views of Spain

Date/Time
Date(s) - 05/10/2016
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Location
Cervantes Institute

Categories


Dr Jamie Wood (University of Lincoln) will be giving a lecture entitled ‘Rich in purple-clad rulers’: Roman and post-Roman views of Spain.

This meeting starts at 7pm

In his seventh-century Laus Spaniae, Isidore of Seville praised the material and human resources of the Iberian Peninsula as part of his efforts to demonstrate that the Visigoths had by then succeeded the Romans as its rightful rulers. Apparently, the land had been rich in purple-clad rulers, they now served a Gothic kingdom. Although it served to undermine Roman claims to Hispania, Isidore’s short text can be read as the culmination of several centuries of Roman commentary on the Spains (for there was more than one province there). This illustrated talk examines the varied Greek and Roman representations of the Iberian Peninsula and its inhabitants, in geographical, literary, historical and other sources.

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