The Phoenicians took possession of the islands in very early times;a remarkable trace of their colonization is preserved in the town of Mago (Maó in Minorca).

After the fall of Carthage, the islands seem to have been virtually independent.

Notwithstanding their celebrity in war, the people were generally very quiet and inoffensive.

The Romans, however, easily find a pretext for charging them with complicity with the Mediterranean pirates, and they are conquered by Q. Caecilius Metellus, thence surnamed Balearicus, in 123 BCE.Metellus settles three thousand Roman and Spanish colonists on the larger island, and foundsthe cities of Palma and Pollentia.

The islands belong, under the Roman Empire, to the conventus of Carthago Nova (modern Cartagena), in the province of Hispania Tarraconensis, of which province they form the fourth district, under the government of a praefectus pro legato.

An inscription of the time of Nero mentions the PRAEF.

PRAE LEGATO INSULAR.

BALIARUM.

(Orelli, No.

732, who, with Muratori, reads pro for prae.)

They are afterwards made a separate province, called Hispania Balearica, probably in the division of the empire under Constantine.