The Arriving on the Iberian Peninsula in 218 BC, the ancient Romans brought with

them Latin, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by
arriving Roman soldiers, settlers and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near
the settlements of previous civilizations. Later, the inhabitants of the cities of
Lusitania and the rest of Romanized Iberia were recognized as citizens of Rome.

Roman control of the western part of Hispania was not consolidated until the
campaigns of Augustus in 26 BC. Although the western territories to the south of
the Tagus River were conquered only after the victory of Licinius Crassus in the
year 93 BC,[1] only an estimated four hundred words of the native languages[2]
persist in modern Portuguese. After 200 years of wars first with the Carthaginians
in the Eastern part of the peninsula, and then the local inhabitants, emperor
Augustus conquered the whole peninsula, which was named Hispania. He then divided
it into three provinces: Hispania Tarraconensis, Hispania Baetica, and Lusitania,
the latter of which included most of modern Portugal. In the 3rd century, emperor
Diocletian split Tarraconensis into three, creating the adjacent province of
Gallaecia, which geographically enclosed the remaining part of Portugal, and
modern-day Galicia (in the northwestern region of Spain).

The Migration Period, also known as the Barbarian Invasions (from the Roman and
Greek perspective), is a term sometimes used for the period in the history of
Europe that saw the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire. The term refers
to the important role played by invasions of non-Roman peoples, notably the Franks,
Goths, Allemanni, Alans, Huns, early Slavs and the Pannonian Avars within or into
the Roman Empire. The period is traditionally taken to have begun in AD 375
(possibly as early as 300) and ended in 568.[2] Various factors contributed to this
phenomenon of migration and invasion, and their role and significance are still
widely discussed.

Historians differ as to the dates for the beginning and ending of the Migration
Period. The beginning of the period is widely regarded as the invasion of Europe by
the Huns from Asia in about 375 and the ending with the conquest of Italy by the
Lombards in 568,[3] but a more loosely set period is from as early as 300 to as
late as 800.[4] For example, in the fourth century a very large group of Goths was
settled as foederati within the Roman Balkans, and the Franks were settled south of
the Rhine in Roman Gaul. In 406 a particularly large and unexpected crossing of the
Rhine was made by a group of Vandals, Alans and Suebi. As central power broke down
in the Western Roman Empire, the military became more important but was itself