Spain

Immediately behind Gaul, Spain is the outermost figure in the back row. This identification would be natural, given the figure's general Celtic appearance, because the two provinces are so consistently paired in Augustan rhetoric and art—see the Primaporta Augustus (original, ca. 19 B.C.; fig. 64), the monument at Lugdunum Convenarum (25 B.C.),^[6] the occasion of the Ara Pacis (13 B.C.), and the standard pairing of the two in Augustus' Res gestae (12.2: "Hispania Galliaque"; 25.2: "Galliae, Hispaniae"; 26.2: "Gallias et Hispanias provincias"; 29.1: "Hispania et Gallia"). Besides her dress and her placement next to Gaul (compare how Roma and the Genius help to identify each other by being next to each other), there is her wreath of leaves. The only province personification on record defined by a wreath of leaves is Hispania; she sometimes has an olive-leaf crown to denote the crop for which the peninsula was as famous as Egypt for grain. The parallel closest in time is a mid-first-century mosaic in the Square of the Guilds at Ostia,^[7] a mediocre piece commissioned by relatively humble patrons (to portray their own sphere of trading activity), who are highly unlikely to have invented the iconography and should be understood as following an already established prototype formulated somewhat earlier in the century. Spain's loose hair, in contrast to Gallia's chignon, recalls the coiffure of Hispan[ia] on L. Postumius Albinus' coinage of 81 B.C. (RRC 372/2); compare the inscribed Hispania (25 B.C.) at Lugdunum Convenarum.^[8]

The iconography of Spain varies in the Republic and Empire. She is

often an Amazon figure with distinctively Spanish weapons (especially the round Celtiberian shield);^[9] examples on Republican coinage have military connotations, of conquest or recruitment (Pompeians) (figs. 55–57). In a similar context on the Primaporta Augustus (figs. 64a, d), namely, conquest, she also has distinctive weaponry (an eagle-headed sword) as her attribute, as does Gallia (boar standard) (fig. 64d).^[10] The olive wreath refers rather to the fruits Spain could give Rome. This iconography prevails later when the emphasis is on Spain's peaceful existence and contribution to the Empire (the negotiatores mosaic, which represents their spheres of trade, Spain and Africa/Egypt; the coin image of Hadrian, sponsored, it should be noted, by a Spanish emperor). The choice of a "peaceful" symbol of fecundity for the BR cup has the same connotations, especially as it stands in distinct contrast to a Republican option of a warlike Spain.