Far back as tradition and theory can reach, the Iberians, possibly of Turanian stock, followed their rude vocations, hunting, fishing, fighting; guarded on one side by the Pyrenees, and on the others by the sea. Next, in an epoch to whose date no approximation is now possible, the Celts came down on Spain, the first wave of that Aryan sea destined to submerge all Europe. Under the Celtiberians, the fierce and powerful compound race now formed by the union of Iberian and Celt, broken indeed into various tribes but with analogous customs and tongues, Spain first became known to the civilized world. Then came the commercial and colonizing Phœnician and planted a settlement at Cádiz. After them the Carthaginians landed on the eastern shore of the Peninsula and founded Carthago Nova, now Cartagena. The power of the Carthaginians in Spain was broken by the Scipios, in the second Punic war, toward the close of the third century B. C.; and yet, says Ticknor, "they have left in the population and language of Spain, traces which have never been wholly obliterated." The Romans, after driving out the Carthaginians, attacked the interior Celtiberians, who fought them hard and long; but the latter being finally subjugated, all Hispania, save perhaps the rugged north-west, was divided into Roman provinces, and in them the language and institutions of Rome were established. Forced from their hereditary feuds by the iron hand of their conquerors, the Celtiberians rapidly increased in wealth and numbers, and of their prosperity the Empire was not slow to make avail. From the fertile fields of Spain flowed vast quantities of _cerealia_ into the granary of Rome. The gold and silver of their metal-veined sierras the enslaved Spaniards were forced to produce, as they in succeeding ages wrung from the natives of the New World the same unjust service. The introduction of Christianity, about the middle of the third century, brought upon the adherents of this religion the most cruel persecutions; which, however, instead of destroying it but rooted it the more firmly. Some say, indeed, that Saint Paul preached at Saragossa, and planted a church there; however this may be, it was not until the conversion of Constantine that Christianity became the dominant religion of the Peninsula.