1 New perspectives on Byzantine Spain: The Discriptio Hispaniae Oriol Olesti Vila, Ricard Andreu Expósito (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and Jamie Wood (University of Lincoln) Abstract The Discriptio Hispaniae is a passage from the Geometry of Gisemundus, also entitled Ars Gromatica Gisemundi (AGG), a medieval treatise of agrimensura written by an unknown author, probably a monk known as Gisemundus who had some agrimensorial experience. The work was compiled around 800 A.D. by collecting passages of a range of sizes, from just a few words to several pages, extracted from ancient and medieval sources. Although modern research into Roman agrimensorial texts has admitted the importance of the AGG, its corrupt condition has not invited sustained analysis. The passage now known as the Discriptio Hispaniae, a short section from chapter three of the second book of the AGG entitled III De segregatione provinciarum ab Augustalibus terminis, is particularly interesting for the information that it provides concerning the territorial division of Hispania in late antiquity. This article presents an edition and English translation of the Discriptio Hispaniae and argues that the most likely point of origin for the Discriptio Hispaniae is during the Byzantine occupation of parts of southern Spain during the second half of the sixth century and the first quarter of the seventh century. We suggest that the Discriptio Hispaniae was preserved because the Byzantine autorities were keen to keep on record information about the borders of the province of Carthaginensis, perhaps the main theme in the text. Keywords Byzantine, Spain, Iberian Peninsula, Justinian, Manuscripts Introduction The Discriptio Hispaniae is a passage from the Geometry of Gisemundus, also entitled Ars Gromatica Gisemundi (AGG), a medieval treatise of agrimensura written by an unknown author, probably a monk known as Gisemundus who had some agrimensorial experience. The work was compiled around 800 A.D. by collecting passages of a range of sizes, from just a few words to several pages, extracted from ancient and medieval sources. Gisemundus had at his disposal a range of relevant resources, including materials from the Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum (CAR), a copy of a Pseudo-Boethian geometry (liber I or Demonstratio artis Geometricae) and Orosius' Historia adversus Paganos. 1 The sources are well known to us, but we can presume that the author also used others which are now lost. The AGG is an exceptional source not only for the knowledge of ancient land surveying texts that it contains but also for understanding their transmission into and beyond the early medieval period. Although modern research into Roman agrimensorial texts has admitted the importance of the AGG, its corrupt condition has not invited sustained analysis. The AGG was first preserved in a now lost manuscript written in Visigothic script in northwest Spain 2 . Most of the text of the AGG was incorporated, via a damaged copy of the original, into a miscellaneous manuscript dated to the second half of the ninth century 1 Thulin (1911); Toneatto (1982), 195. 2 Andreu (2015), 14-26, provides an overview of the evidence for the work’s Visigothic origin, including: confusion between letters (especially a and u), abbreviations (per/pro and the number 1000), and Latin orthographic features. See also: Andreu (2011).