[108] When Rome conquered the Iberian peninsula there was a kinship and a cultural similarity between the peoples of Aquitaine (present southwest France) and Cantabria. This was made clear by Caesar and others. ⁽¹⁾ From the Pyrenees to Galicia there were peoples similar to each other in their ways of life. Strabo said (and others bear him out) that all of the people of this northern, mountainous strip of Iberia lived essentially the same sort of life and had customs that were virtually identical (Fig. 10). ⁽²⁾It was a matriarchal, agro-pastoral civilization, the vestiges of which are still to be found in parts of the region. ⁽³⁾ Farming-and-herding peoples of this oceanic fringe had been settled in the area since before the beginning of the first millennium B.C. In spite of subsequent changes, brought about by incursions of new peoples (most of whom had somewhat the same Central European background as that of the earlier arrivals), they had maintained [109] an affinity for each other and considerable differences from the societies of patriarchal herders who occupied most of the meseta. ⁽⁴⁾

There is abundant evidence that to the south of present Galicia, in what is now North Portugal, there was an extension of many of the same culture attitudes. The intimate, friendly association of the peoples of the area of present Galicia and those of the area of the present Minho Province of North Portugal cannot be doubted, for it was difficult to make a clear distinction [111] between them at that time. Callaeci north of the Minho River were not of precisely the same tribe as the Callaeci to the south of the stream, but the two were sufficiently alike in their ways to be conveniently grouped together for administrative purposes. Caro Baroja has shown by his maps, two of which are reproduced in Figure 11a and Figure 11b, ⁽⁵⁾ that several fundamental culture items were common to all of the north and northwest fringe of Iberia, down at least to the Douro River. These maps not only show similarities among the peoples along the humid fringe but emphasize the differences between the periphery and the dry meseta in the interior.

Furthermore, there seems to have been a fundamental similarity between the peoples of the area of present North Portugal (between the Minho and Douro rivers) and the Lusitanians in present central Portugal. These Lusitanians probably harked back to a pre-Celtic period of time in Portugal. They were not descended from Central European peoples of the same stock as were the agriculturists and pastoralists of the north. Nor, on the other hand, were they originally Iberians (in the strict sense), although they may represent an Iberian sub-group that later, but prior to our first record of them, had become Celticized, culturally and perhaps even physically. ⁽⁶⁾ They were a distinct sub-group that lived between the Tejo and Douro rivers, but had been acculturated and mixed with peoples to the north of the Douro to such an extent that it was sometimes difficult to make a neat separation. This was notably so in comparison with the Callaeci. Silius Italicus distinguished the difference, but texts and archaeology show them to be difficult to separate culturally or ethnically. ⁽⁷⁾

There was, then, a basic cultural similarity among peoples, extending from present France through northern Spain and down into Portugal to the Tejo River. This is not to say, however, [112] that there were not differences among them, clearly recognized and strongly felt by the tribes themselves. They were in a sense cousins, rather than brothers. The Lusitanians were distinct from the Callaeci Bracarenses to the north of the Douro River (Fig. 12). These latter were divided from the Callaeci Lucenses to the north of the Minho River, and history and philology agree that the boundary between the Callaeci and [113] the Astures lay along the Navia River, not far to the east of the present boundary separating Galicia from Asturias. ⁽⁸⁾

With this diversity amid unity it is not surprising that confusion came about in the record of the various writers of the time. It seems that this was even furthered by the peoples involved. For example, prior to the campaign of Decimus Junius Brutus along the west of the peninsula (137 B.C.) the word "Callaecia" merely referred to a tribal territory, but we have Strabo's word for the fact that after that time the land farther south might be suggested by the term as some of the Lusitanians, impressed with the fame of the Callaeci, took to using their name. ⁽⁹⁾ The Lusitanians under their own name gained fame somewhat later. Either because of this change in names by local groups or because of the blending of the various culturally akin peoples, and also undoubtedly due to confusion or carelessness on the part of Roman writers, the name Lusitania at times was used for all of the peninsula.

The Roman advance along the western Mediterranean, like that of the Greeks, was made, not by plan or with a predetermined goal, but by steps taken one at a time as the opportunity or necessity occurred. In Iberia many steps were forced upon the Romans. Carthage was a growing rival and was expanding eastward along the Mediterranean. In Iberia when this advance reached into the northeast, as far as present Catalonia, the maneuver was obviously threatening to Rome. The peninsula was a base of supplies, both material and human, for the Carthaginian armies, and Roman action was mandatory.

The history of contacts between peoples in the peninsula and Mediterraneans farther to the east contributed to the ease of Roman entry along the Mediterranean coasts. In the first place [114] Carthage had become increasingly severe in her demands -- especially for levies of troops -- and Carthaginian popularity had not been increased by it. On the other hand the peoples of the urbanized Mediterranean coasts of Spain were thoroughly acquainted with European Mediterraneans to the east of them. The Greeks had long been friendly traders and the people of the Phocaean colony of Massalia had continued to maintain contact even after the battle of Alalia and the Carthaginian dominance of Mediterranean waters of Iberia. The Massaliotes and the Romans recognized a common enemy in Carthage and struck an alliance as early as 348 B.C. ⁽¹⁰⁾ By reason of all of these conditions the way was opened for the Romans, and they advanced without difficulty along the littoral in the third century B.C.

It was with the Celts and the Celticized groups of the interior and west that Rome faced her greatest difficulties. Here, too, it was more a matter of one step demanding another, than desire to possess either of these areas, that drove Rome to further conquest. ⁽¹¹⁾ There is little reason to suppose that either the bleak meseta or most of the remote west had any attraction for the Romans. The sanguinary battles with the Celtiberians on the one hand and the Lusitanians on the other were not worth the cost in terms of the territory involved. The fact was that these dissident peoples were a threat to Roman control of the Mediterranean regions and they had to be subdued.

In the non-Mediterranean areas the Romans were not dealing with essentially peaceful, urbanized folk of the kind that were known along the Mediterranean shores. Both the Celts of the interior and, especially, the Celticized hill folk of the west were of a different stamp. They were anything but complacent with [115] regard to Roman assumption of authority over them. They were a bellicose lot, famous for their interest in physical exploits, and were reputed to like fighting their neighbors better than cultivation of the soil. ⁽¹²⁾ That they felt themselves to be different from the city people of the Mediterranean slope is made manifest by their resistance to the Romans. Viriathus was the most flamboyant among them and had a quality of leadership fitting to his opportunities. But the spectacular sweep of Lusitanian armies under his command across the width of Iberia, decimating Roman legions on their way, was not inspired by their leader; it was not forced upon his people; nor was it the achievement of mercenaries. Rather it represented the upsurge of an independent group of strong character that had found an effective leader. This dire threat to Roman control of the peninsula was averted by hiring the assassination of Viriathus. Whatever one may feel about the judgment and the deed, he must recognize that it was effective of the end it sought. There was no comparable leader among the Lusitanians, and opposition, although continued, was dogged rather than aggressive. The remnants of the Lusitanian forces withdrew in separate, small groups to the castros of the rural northwest and maintained resistance for several generations. ⁽¹³⁾

It was this sort of danger that forced the Romans to continue their conquest to the last remote outposts. The quality of the land, except for the lower Tejo valley and parts of the littoral, was of small attraction to them. In the rural northwest there were gold sands, but little else to catch their interest. Yet it was obvious that rebellious remnants, with a history of truculence and raiding of settled places, could not be tolerated by imperial Rome. However, the reduction of the territory was far more difficult than Rome could have suspected at first. It took more than a century and a half, compared with seven years for the conquest of all of Gaul. ⁽¹⁴⁾
 

The Consul Decimus Junius Brutus, after fortifying Lisbon, advanced to the north, destroying settlements as he went. He established a fortified position at Viseu, crossed the Douro River, and reached the Lima River by 137 B.C. ⁽¹⁵⁾ Ultimately, according to Strabo, he conquered to the Minho River ⁽¹⁶⁾. At the end of his campaigns, Rome controlled the territory between the Douro and Minho rivers plus probable extensions along the coast and in the interior. ⁽¹⁷⁾ It was only under Augustus, however, at the last of the first century B.C. that present North Portugal and Galicia were fully pacified and put under Roman control. The cities of Asturica Augusta (Astorga) and Bracara Augusta (Braga) were then founded. To the south, Emerita Augusta (Mérida) was settled in 25 B.C. with the emeriti of the fifth and tenth legions. It became the capital of Roman Lusitania, that is, the territory lying between the Tejo and Douro rivers and extending eastward to present Talavera de la Reina.

Roads were built to connect these and other settlements, in order to maintain firm control of this long-resistant area. ⁽¹⁸⁾ Villas were established. These large estates, rather like plantations in the New World of a later time, had the necessary structures and retainers grouped around the manor house. ⁽¹⁹⁾ Many of the names of these Roman villas have persisted until now as names of parishes or small towns. The quintas, the large and middlesized properties of present northwest Portugal, perhaps represent subdivisions of the villa. ⁽²⁰⁾ The total number of Romans [117] settled in the north was comparatively small, for this rainy, forested country was not to their taste. Compared to the rest of Iberia, it was Romanized late and poorly. ⁽²¹⁾ The south of Portugal, Mediterranean Portugal, was somewhat more to their liking. ⁽²²⁾ This was sunny country, wheat country, good for olives and grapes. Evora, of the Alentejo, became known to them as Cerealis, a place of obvious attraction to the wheat-eating Romans.

In the control of the west, Rome did not set up divisions contrary to previous tribal and cultural arrangement, except for reasons of military strategy or police requirements. ⁽²³⁾ The administrative organization of Roman Lusitania was ethnically reasonable if not perfect. It grouped together people with fundamentally similar attitudes and values. ⁽²⁴⁾ The province of Tarraconensis, extending in a broad band across all of the north and including most of the east of the peninsula, was an exception to this policy. It included greatly disparate culture groups. The Romans realized the awkwardness of the arrangement and tried on several occasions to remedy the matter by establishing borders more in keeping with ethnic distribution. But they faced a twofold problem. Administration boundaries suitable to tribal (that is, cultural) boundaries conduced to smooth operation of control, and wherever possible the Romans followed this precept. ⁽²⁵⁾ However, in dealing with belligerent subjugated peoples, the matter of military strategy took primacy over all other considerations. This fundamental conflict between [118] civil and military control was nowhere more evident than in the northwest of Iberia.

The first division of the country under Augustus put all of northwest Iberia into the province of Lusitania. ⁽²⁶⁾ Later, probably between the years 15 and 1 B.C., the area down to the Douro, that is, inclusive of present North Portugal, was put under the control of Citerior Spain, which later became the Tarraconensis Province. This military device was made necessary by the administrative insecurity of the remote, intransigent, newly conquered province. ⁽²⁷⁾ It obviously was not satisfactory, and Tiberius made a separate unit of approximately the territory of present Galicia and Asturias. ⁽²⁸⁾ Later Caracalla set up other boundaries for a short-lived northwestern province under the governor, Cerealis. ⁽²⁹⁾

It seemed impossible to arrange the exterior boundaries of the province satisfactorily for both the people of the area and for the Roman government. In setting the boundaries of the subdivisions within the province, difficulty was mostly avoided by equating such limits with the culture groups affected. The territory of the Callaeci Lucenses (Fig. 12) became, with but slight difference, the Roman judicial district (Conventus Iuridicus) centered upon Lucus Augusti (Lugo) which included approximately the present territory of the Spanish province of Galicia. The territory of the Callaeci Bracarenses fitted well to the judicial district centered upon Bracara Augusta (Braga). ⁽³⁰⁾ It foreshadowed the modern North Portugal.
 

The Romans had certain fixations with regard to organization and ways of life. They effectively imposed their language upon the peninsula. Their code of law was applied. Changes were made in ways of living where it seemed necessary to administration. The hilltop dwellers of the northwest were largely transferred to the bottom lands. This was presumably done to eliminate raiding. By this action, however, an even more fundamental change was made in society. Present information indicates that men had taken, at best, a casual interest in agriculture. That had been woman's work, to be done with the hoe. In the bottom lands the problem was completely different, for not only was plow agriculture possible but it was obviously a superior mode of operation. Furthermore, the heavier sods of the bottom lands are harder to cut than those of the hill lands and probably offered a real obstacle to the hoe. Perhaps of greater importance was the invariable association of men with the care and use of animals. With the introduction of the draft animal into agriculture men were immediately involved. Being involved, however, does not necessarily mean that they took to it whole-heartedly.

Even today the transfer of responsibility seems not to have been complete. This is shown by the fact that in Galicia and in the Minho of Portugal there is little distinction between the duties of men and women in the fields. In Galicia, women may perform any of the tasks (although rarely plowing). In the Minho, one is told that the heavier tasks go to the men, but this usually means merely that the job involving the use of an animal is a male responsibility, whereas other tasks, seemingly as heavy, are accomplished by women. In the bottom lands, where agriculture with plowmen became fundamental, raiding was eliminated, and the importance of herding was reduced.

All of this altered the social structure in the area. Formerly it had been based fundamentally on extended family units. Each castro had been an individual autarchy, with collective [120] occupancy of the land. This was changed with the Roman introduction of individual ownership of the land. ⁽³¹⁾

The changes in Iberia effected by the Romans were not only great but also lasting. This resulted partly from the fact that the Romans were dealing, in many areas, with peoples who had "Mediterranean" ways not too different from those of the Romans themselves. Rome's troubles in the conquest and pacification of the interior and remote exterior areas of Iberia came from the bellicose Celtic or Celticized peoples, who were not "Mediterranean" in their points of view. Ultimately, however, Rome brought all of the dissidents to heel, and, through social and economic organization, as well as consideration for cultural differences where they did not interfere with administration, made the peninsula an effective unit in the empire.

1. Júlio Caro Baroja, Los Pueblos del Norte de la Península Ibérica, p. 82.

2. Ibid., p. 38.

3. Ibid., p. 205.

4. Ibid., p. 227. See also Chapter 6 on Celtic immigration. It was true not only when the Romans first knew the territory but also as late as the twentieth century, according to Abelardo Merino ("El Regionalismo peninsular y la geografía histórica," Boletín de la Real Sociedad Geográfica, LVIII (1916), 293-294): "To all of the zone of Cantabria and Atlantic to Porto can be applied Murgia's dictum (except for the maritime villas of Santander): a life more internal than external with no effect on the balance of the peninsula . . . through all of its historical experiences it continues to be 'fishing and agricultural,' in a word 'primitive.'

"In vain did foreigners with their pilgrimages try to make Santiago a cosmopolitan urb. . . One can not exaggerate Vascocantabrismos, Asturianismos or Gallegismos."

5. Caro, Pueblos del Norte, maps 6 and 7, pp. 208 and 210 respectively.

6. A. A. Mendes Corrêa, "Celtas na Beira," Boletim da Casa das Beiras, X (1943), No. 6, 5-11, and "A Lusitania pré-romana," História de Portugal, I, 182.

7. Mendes Corrêa, "A Lusitania pré-romana," História de Portugal, I, 183.

8. Claudio Sánchez Albornoz y Menduiña, "Divisiones tribales y administrativas del solar del reino de Asturias en la época romana," Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, XCV, No. 1 (July-Sept., 1929), 317.

9. J. Leite de Vasconcellos, Religiões da Lusitania, I, xxii.

10. António García y Bellido, Hispania Graeca, I, 238.

11. Except for gold in the northwest. Juan Maluquer de Motes, "Los Pueblos de la España céltica," Historia de España, Tomo I, Vol. III, Pt. 1, 79.

12. A. A. Mendes Corrêa, "A Lusitania pré-romana," História de Portugal, I, 191-192.

13. Vergílio Correia, "O Domínio Romana," História de Portugal, I, 218.

14. Ibid., p. 217.

15. Ibid., p. 218.

16. Francisco José Velozo, "A Lusitânia Suevico-Bizantina," Bracara Augusta, II, No. 2 (July, 1950), 118; No. 3 (Oct., 1950), 221-256; No. 4 (Feb., 1951), 389-402; IV, Nos. 1-3 (Dec., 1952), 46-69.

17. Casimiro Torres, "Límites geográficos de Galicia en los siglos IV y V," Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos, IV, No. 14 (1949), 367-368.

18. See A. de Amorim Girão, Geografia de Portugal, map facing p. 366, for Roman roads.

19. Velozo, "A Lusitania Suevico-Bizantina," Bracara Augusta, II, No. 2 (July, 1950), 151.

20. António Jorge Dias, Os Arados Portugueses e as suas prováveis origens, p. 117.

21. Claudio Sánchez Albornoz y Menduiña, Ruina y extinción del municipio romano en España e instituciones que le reemplazan, p. 118.

22. Dias, Arados, p. 103.

23. António Jorge Dias, Rio de Onor, p. 56.

24. Exception here could clearly be taken to the inclusion of the Cónios of the Algarve. However, they were a small group, inhabiting a small territory. Obviously Rome could not establish administrative subdivisions for each minor group.

25. Velozo, "A Lusitânia Suevico-Bizantina," Bracara Augusta, II, No. 2 (July, 1950), 126.

26. C. Torres, "Límites geográficos ...," Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos, IV, No. 14 (1949), 371.

27. Ibid., p. 372; Claudio Sánchez Albornoz y Menduiñia, "Divisiones tribales y administrativas del solar del reino de Asturias en la época romana," Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, XCV, No. 1 (July-Sept, 1929), 377.

28. C. Torres, "Límites geográficos ...," Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos, IV, No. 14 (1949), 372.

29. Sánchez Albornoz, "Divisiones tribales ...," Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, XCV, No. 1 (July-Sept., 1929), 384.

30. In fact, the boundaries of the Roman judicial districts fit nicely with the present national boundaries of Portugal. Velozo, "A Lusitania Suevico-Bizantina," Bracara Augusta, II, No. 2 (July, 1950), 126; António García y Bellido, La Península Ibérica en los comienzos de su historia, p. 393.

31. Dias, Arados, p. 103. It eliminated much of the primitive collectivism, but not all. Traces are still to be found in northwest Spain and in northern Portngal. See Caro, Pueblos del Norte, p. 45, and Dias Rio de Onor, especially Chapters V and VI, and Vilarinho da Puma, especially Chapters IV and VI.

Even with Roman efficiency the castro was not entirely eliminated as a fort and place of resistance, for in 430 A.D., when the Swabians "desolated" the interior of Galicia the local inhabitants defended themselves in strong castel-forts. Mannel Torres ["Las Invasiones y los Reinos Germánicos de España (Años 409-711),"] Historia de España, III, 27; Velozo, "A Lusitánia Suevico-Bizantina," Bracara Augusta, II, No. 3 (Oct.) 1950), 249.