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Luis Silva - Viriathus: And the Lusitanian Resistance to Rome 155-139 BC

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Luis Silva Viriathus: And the Lusitanian Resistance to Rome 155-139 BC
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In the middle years of the second century BC, Rome was engaged in the conquest and pacification of what is now Spain and Portugal. They met with determined resistance from several tribes but nobody defied them with more determination and skill than Viriathus. Apparently of humble birth, he emerged as a leader after the treacherous massacre of the existing tribal chieftains and soon proved himself a gifted and audacious commander. Relying on hit and run guerrilla tactics, he inflicted repeated humiliating reverses upon the theoretically superior Roman forces, uniting a number of tribes in resistance to the invader and stalling their efforts at conquest and pacification for eight years. Still unbeaten in the field, he was only overcome when the Romans resorted to bribing some of his own men to assassinate him (though they reneged on the agreed payment, claiming they did not reward traitors!). Though renowned in his day Viriathus has been neglected by modern historians, a travesty that Luis Silva puts right in this thoroughly researched and accessible account. Portuguese by birth, the author draws on Portuguese research and perspectives that will be refreshing to English-language scholars and his own military experience also informs his analysis of events. What emerges is a stirring account of defiance, heroic resistance against the odds and, ultimately, treachery and tragedy.

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First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright Luis Silva 2013

HARDBACK ISBN: 978 1 78159 128 4
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47383 077 6
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47382 689 2
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47382 645 8

The right of Luis Silva to be identified as Author of this Work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including
photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in England by CPI

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword
Aviation, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Wharncliffe Local
History, Pen and Sword Select, Pen and Sword Military Classics and Leo
Cooper.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact:
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail:
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Contents

List of Maps

Introduction

The Lusitanian War (155139 BC)

Viriathus the Iberian against Rome

The Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula lasted for 200 years (218 BC19 BC). It began when the two Scipio brothers, Gnaeus and Publius Cornelius Scipio, landed at Ampurias, on the Catalonian coast in southeastern Spain, at the start of the Second Punic War, and ended with the final Roman military campaign against the Cantabrians in northern Spain.

During this long period of conquest, classical historians recorded the names, places and actions associated with the indigenous resistance to Roman control. Among the autochthonous groups led by Iberian commanders against Rome, the most prominent mentioned were the Celtiberians and the Lusitanians. The story begins with an early Lusitanian leader, Punicus, who incited another native group, the Vettones, to join him in his fight against Rome in 155 BC. Together they drove the conflict deep into Baetica, where they attacked the Blastofenicios, Roman subjects occupying the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Upon Punicus death in battle, he was succeeded by another Lusitanian, Cesarus, who incited the Celtiberians to continue the war against the Romans. The next major Lusitanian warrior mentioned was Cauceno. The troops of this elected tribal leader travelled the whole region south of the Tagus River, attacking the Conii, who were allies of Rome, and the Conii city of Conistorgis.

Other Iberian warrior chiefs were mentioned in Roman historiography, such as Curius, Apuleius, Connoba, Retogenes, Megaravico, Tautalus and Corocota, but during the entire period of Romes conquest of Hispania no other warrior chief or military commander was more celebrated or more dangerous to the Romans than a Lusitanian named Viriathus. Viriathus guerrilla tactics gave him an enormous mobility that bewildered the Romans. His actions and military victories embraced a very wide area of the peninsulas territory and his successes incited other tribes to either join his cause or start their own rebellions against Rome. Viriathus became a great leader and tactician because he knew his people and the Romans very well. With this knowledge he was able to transform a disordered group of individual warriors into a disciplined army. Although guerilla warfare in the ancient world is occasionally mentioned in texts about Alexander the Greats campaigns and the Jugurthine War (112-150 BC), the Lusitanian War, driven by Viriathus, is said to have made such an impact that it was passed down throughout the centuries as a model of guerrilla campaigning.

Justinus, summarizing the account of the Lusitanian War by Gnaeus Trogus Pompeius, a Gallic historian writing during Augustus reign, declared that the Lusitanians did not have a better general than Viriathus. All of the Greco-Roman authors that wrote about the Lusitanian War agreed that Viriathus was of humble origins, a shepherd and a bandit, and that in time he became a great leader of men. He was also unanimously praised for his virtue and austerity.

The late Iberian historian Adolf Schulten, as well as other twentieth-century historians and scholars, rank Viriathus among the great barbarian leaders similar to Armnius, Vercingetorix, Boudica, Tacfarinas and Decebalus. But Viriathus was the first barbarian on record to unite and integrate warriors from different tribes to fight against Rome for their liberty.

Viriathus death, due to betrayal, marked the end of the organized resistance movement against Romes power in Hispania, with the result that Rome imposed its imperialistic policies all across the Iberian Peninsula.

Maurico Pastor Muoz, a professor of history at Spains University of Granada, has written two important books on Viriathus that document both the historical facts as they are known and stories that may be fictitious or mythical. As happens with many great persons of the past, various aspects of Viriathus life were transformed into legend. Writing about the life and exploits of a person whose life was half history and half legend is not an easy task, for it requires a meticulous analysis of the classical sources and the modern interpretations in order to fully understand who the subject was and what he represents in the historical record. In this work I will attempt to separate the historical facts from legend and fiction, but at times this may not be possible.

Portugal and Spain did not exist in Viriathus time; the land that encompasses much of them was known as Lusitania. Therefore he was neither Portuguese nor Spanish, but Lusitanian. The classical authors present him as an intelligent, strong leader who rose up to defend a particular political and military unification (an entity we might call a state today) against Rome and perhaps even create the idea of a monarchy in Lusitania.

Roman historiography presents Viriathus as a strong personality, similar to other military commanders of the time, including Hannibal, Sertorius and Julius Ceasar. Thanks to this personality, during the ten years his war lasted he led the Lusitanians not just as a military commander but as a king.

Viriathus was part of a society that was fundamentally made up of warriors, of which we know very little apart from a small amount of information from ancient Roman texts and archaeological data. Although we know something about the Lusitanian family system, the ownership of land, the position of women, and the tribes class structure, it is hard to distinguish whether the classes intertwined with one another or not. We also know that these people had iron weapons, gold and jewellery that were works of art. The data that exists about the Lusitanians, though small, gives us a glimpse into their social, political and economic life.

The Lusitanians were an aristocratic society, and one which dedicated itself mainly to war. Like many other ancient Celtic societies, war was the road for social promotion, but it was a hard and risky road in which only few succeeded. This was the case for Viriathus.

Because of his personality and fighting prowess, Viriathus became leader of not just his Lusitanian clan but of all Lustianians living between the Douro and Tagus Rivers. The consolidation of his power was recognized by the Roman Senate who named him amicus poplui romani in 140 BC, putting Viriathus at the same level as other detached allied kings. With this recognition, Lusitanian society transformed, evolving and integrating itself, becoming Roman. It also began to form a political entity that transformed from a motley group of clans into the beginnings of a monarchy, headed by Viriathus, something unheard of in Iberian-Celtic societies. Though others before and after him were nominated leaders of the Lusitanians, no other gained such fame for his actions.

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