The city, far older than Leon and Burgos, existed prior to the Roman conquest. It is identified by some with the Elmantica of Polybius, in which others recognise the neighbouring town of Alba de Tormes. Plutarch speaks of it as Salmatica, ‘a great town of Spain,’ and relates the heroic exploits of its womenfolk. Besieged by the Carthaginians under Hannibal, the inhabitants were forced to surrender. They were ordered to evacuate the town, leaving behind them all their arms and property as spoils for the victors. They were then placed under a guard of Massilians, while the rest of the Punic host hastened to plunder the forsaken city. But the women, who had accompanied the prisoners and whom no one had thought of searching, produced weapons which they had concealed about them, and armed their husbands, who fell upon their guards and cut them to pieces. The Carthaginian army was thrown into dismay by this unexpected attack, and the brave Salamantians were enabled to make good their escape to the hills. Hannibal is stated by Plutarch to have graciously pardoned the enemy that had eluded his vengeance. Salamanca, with the rest of the province of Lusitania, passed under the sway of Rome, and seems to have been a place of some importance. Money was coined here in the reign of Tiberius, and the town was governed by duumvirs. Christianity must have early taken root here, for when the Goths conquered Spain they found an episcopal see already established at Salamanca. It had already been for a time the seat of a Vandal governor, Genseric, brother of King Huneric. Money was struck bearing the names of the city and of the kings Erwig and Egica. Certain bishops are mentioned as assisting at the councils of Toledo: Eleutherius at the third; Hiccila at the fourth and fifth; Egered at the seventh, eighth, and tenth; Providentius at the twelfth; Holemund at the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth. When in 715 Salamanca was submerged by the Moorish invasion, her bishop sought refuge with Pelayo in the glens of Asturias, and we read that Alfonso the Chaste assigned the basilica of San Salvador at Oviedo, to Quindulfo, the occupant of the see then _in partibus infidelium_. The city did not long remain in the undisturbed possession of the Moor. It was taken by Alfonso I. in 750, and again in 858 by Ordoño I., who made captive the Moorish amir, and released him only after extorting better terms for his Christian subjects. But this promise did not tempt back the bishops from their safe retreat in the north. Sebastian, who wore the mitre about the year 880, occupied himself with writing a chronicle of Spain from the reign of Wamba to his own day. His patron, Alfonso el Magno, succeeded in expelling the Mohammedans from Salamanca, and thought to annex it definitely to his kingdom; but it was recaptured by Abd-ur-Rahman, the Khalifa, five years later, the Christian inhabitants, including priests, to the number of two hundred, being put to the sword.