Page "Palencia" Paragraph 10

The fortified Celtiberian settlement is mentioned as Pallantia () by Strabo and Ptolemy, a version possibly of the Celtic root pala (" plain ").

It was the chief town of the Vaccaei, although Strabo wrongly assigns it to the Arevaci.

The city was starved into submission by the Romans in the 2nd century BCE and incorporated into the province of Hispania Tarraconensis, in the jurisdiction of Colonia Clunia Sulpicia ( modern Clunia ).

Though the little Roman garrison city was an active mint, it was insignificant compared to the Roman villas of Late Antiquity in the surrounding territory.

Archeologists have uncovered the remains of Roman villas at La Olmeda and at the " Quintanilla de la Cueza ", where the fragments of mosaic floors are spectacularly refined.

According to the 5th-century Galician chronicler Idatius, the city of Palencia was all but destroyed ( 457 ) in the Visigothic wars against the Suevi: the date falls in the reign of Theodoric II, whose power center still lay far to the east, in Aquitania.

When the Visigoths conquered the territory, however, they retained the Roman rural villa system in establishing the Campos Góticos.