Hispania Citerior in the context of "Celtiberians"

Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus (c. 188 BC – 116 BC/115 BC) was a statesman and general of the Roman Republic during the second century BC. He was praetor in 148 BC, consul in 143 BC, the Proconsul of Hispania Citerior in 142 BC and censor in 131 BC. He got his agnomen, Macedonicus, for his victory over the Macedonians in the Fourth Macedonian War.

Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Roman Republic, it was divided into two provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. During the Roman Empire, under the Principate, Hispania Ulterior was subdivided into Baetica and Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was reorganized as Hispania Tarraconensis.

Beginning with Diocletian’s Tetrarchy (AD 293), the territory of Tarraconensis was further divided to create the provinces of Carthaginensis and Gallaecia (also called Callaecia, the origin of the name of modern Galicia). All the Hispanic provinces on the mainland, together with the Balearic Islands and the North African province of Mauretania Tingitana, were later organized into the Diocesis Hispaniarum, governed by a vicarius.

The Roman Republic conquered and occupied territories in the Iberian Peninsula that were previously under the control of native Celtic, Iberian, Celtiberian and Aquitanian tribes and the Carthaginian Empire. The Carthaginian territories in the south and east of the peninsula were conquered in 206 BC during the Second Punic War. Control was gradually extended over most of the peninsula without annexations. It was completed after the end of the Roman Republic (27 BC), by Augustus, the first Roman emperor, who annexed the whole of the peninsula to the Roman Empire in 19 BC.

This conquest started with the Roman acquisition of the former Carthaginian territories in southern Hispania and along the east coast as a result of defeating the Carthaginians (206 BC) during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), after which the Carthaginian forces left the peninsula. This resulted in an ongoing Roman territorial presence in southern and eastern Hispania. In 197 BC, the Romans established two Roman provinces. These were Hispania Citerior (Nearer Spain) along most of the east coast (an area corresponding to the modern Valencia, Catalonia and part of Aragon) and Hispania Ulterior (Further Spain) in the south, corresponding to modern Andalusia.

The Celtiberian oppidum of Numantia was attacked more than once by Roman forces, but the siege of Numantia refers to the culminating and pacifying action of the long-running Numantine War between the forces of the Roman Republic and those of the native population of Hispania Citerior. The Numantine War was the third of the Celtiberian Wars and it broke out in 143 BC. A decade later, in 133 BC, the Roman general and hero of the Third Punic War, Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, subjugated Numantia, the chief Celtiberian city.

The Numantine War (from Bellum Numantinum in Appian's Roman History) was the last conflict of the Celtiberian Wars fought by the Romans to subdue those people along the Ebro, in what is now Spain. It was a twenty-year conflict between the Celtiberian tribes of Hispania Citerior and the Roman government. It began in 154 BC as a revolt of the Celtiberians of Numantia on the Douro. The first phase of the war ended in 151, but in 143, war flared up again with a new insurrection in Numantia.

The first war was fought contemporaneously with the Lusitanian War in Hispania Ulterior. The Lusitanians were subdued by Sulpicius Galba, who betrayed their surrender and executed their leading men, and the Arevaci of Hispania Citerior continued the war and allied with the Lusitanian leader Viriathus.

Lucius Licinius Lucullus was a Roman politician who became consul in 151 BC.

Lucullus was sent to Hispania Citerior (Nearer Spain, on the east coast of Hispania) when the senate rejected a proposal for a peace treaty with the Celtiberians by Marcus Claudius Marcellus to end the Numantine War (154–152 BC). However, Marcellus went ahead with his plan and quickly concluded a treaty before Lucullus got there. Lucullus was disappointed and, "being greedy of fame and needing money because he was in straitened circumstances", he attacked the Vaccaei, a Celtiberian tribe which lived further north and who were not at war with Rome, and did so without the authorisation of the senate. He claimed that they had mistreated the Carpetani as an excuse.