Towards the southeast, Punic influence spread from the Carthaginian cities on the coast: New Carthage (Roman Carthago Nova, modern Cartagena), Abdera and Malaca (Málaga).

After the defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War, which found its casus belli on the coast of Baetica at Saguntum, Hispania was significantly Romanized in the course of the 2nd century BC, following the uprising initiated by the Turdetani in 197.

Baetica was divided into four conventūs, which were territorial divisions like judicial circuits, where the chief men met together at major centers, at fixed times of year, under the eye of the proconsul, to oversee the administration of justice: the conventus Gaditanus (of Gades, or Cádiz), Cordubensis (of Cordoba), Astigitanus (of Astigi, or Écija), and Hispalensis (of Hispalis, or Seville).

So in spite of some social upsets, as when Septimius Severus put to death a number of leading Baetians— including women — the elite in Baetica remained a stable class for centuries.

Facts that the Emperor Vespasian was rewarding when he granted the Ius latii that extended the rights pertaining to Roman citizenship (latinitas) to the inhabitants of Hispania, an honor that secured the loyalty of the Baetian elite and its middle class.

Trajan, the first emperor since Claudius to be of provincial birth, though of Italic stock, was born in Itálica (Baetica), a colony established in 206 BC by Scipio Africanus for Roman veterans of the Second Punic War.

On 171 groups of mauri (natives of Mauretania Tingitana, roughly modern day Morocco) crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and looted rural towns for months until they were expelled.

A century later, in 296–297, Emperor Maximian built a massive palace nearby Córdoba from where to command the campaign against piracy in the Strait and Berber incursions in Mauritania.

The Catholic bishops of Baetica, solidly backed by their local population, were able to convert the Arian Visigoth king Reccared and his nobles.