Before the industry of man had harnessed the wayward streams this hot land must have been little better than an arid wilderness, yet it has been inhabited from the remotest times, and its possession was keenly contested between the great powers of antiquity. The natives were known to the ancients as the Mastiani, and are credited with the virtues which were so long supposed to have been characteristic of primitive man. This simple, blameless race fell an easy victim to the wily Phœnicians, who scented the precious metals within these barren hills. Elche, Guadix, and Jijona betray in their etymology a Semitic origin. Next came the Greek Vikings from Samos and Rhodes and Phokaia, establishing themselves at many points along the eastern shore of the Iberian land. The rivalry between the Phœnician and Hellenic colonies precipitated a contest between their respective allies, the Carthaginians and the Romans. Hasdrubal founded the port of New Carthage, the name of which is still preserved in Cartagena, whence, with a host of 90,000 foot and 12,000 horse, Hannibal started on his famous march to Rome. The fall of the city, which was bravely defended by Mago against Scipio, entailed the destruction of the Punic power in Spain. Under the Roman yoke Carthago Nova became the capital of the vast province of Tarraconensis, and the adjoining district in consequence felt the full force of all the attacks made by rebels and barbarians on the tottering empire. Under the Visigoths it was erected into a duchy by the name of Aurariola. The Duke Theodomir, unlike most of his peers, offered a strenuous resistance to the Moslem arms, and when defeated in battle and besieged in Orihuela, succeeded by a stratagem in preserving his territory. By disguising all the women as warriors and parading them on the walls, he so deceived the Moors as to the strength of the garrison as to obtain from them a recognition of the independence of the duchy, subject to the suzerainty of the khalifa. The province became known after its chief by the name of Todmir. It endured as an autonomous state for some sixty-eight years, its final absorption in the Moslem empire being brought about by the last dukes espousing the cause of Charlemagne or his Moorish allies. Arabic colonists poured in and soon out-numbered the Christian inhabitants. The last province of Spain to bow before the Crescent became rapidly the most Moorish of any.