Lusitania
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- This article concerns the Roman province. For the ship, see RMS Lusitania. For other uses, see Lusitania (disambiguation).
Lusitania was an ancient Roman province including approximately all of modern Portugal south of the Douro river, and part of modern Spain (the present autonomous community of Extremadura and a small part of the province of Salamanca). It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people (an Indo-European people). Its capital was Emerita Augusta (currently Mérida), and it was initially part of the Roman Republic province of Hispania Ulterior, before becoming a province of its own in the Roman Empire.
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[edit] Pre-Roman Lusitania
Strabo in his Geography mentions that the ancient people called Lusitania to the lands north of river Douro, the land that in his own time was known as Gallaecia.[1]
[edit] Origin of the name
The etymology of Lusitania, like the origin of the Lusitani who gave the province their name, is unclear. The name may be of Celtic origin: Lus and Tanus, "tribe of Lusus".
The name may derive from Lucis, an ancient people mentioned in Ora Maritima and Tan, from celtic Tan (Stan), or Tain, meaning a region or implying a country of waters, a root word that formerly meant a prince or sovereign governor of a region. [2] [3] [4] The name has been connected with the personal celtic name Luso and with the god Lugh.[5]
Ancient Romans, such as Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 3.5) and Varro (cited by Pliny), speculated that the name Lusitania was of Roman origin, as when Pliny says lusum enim liberi patris aut lyssam cum eo bacchantium nomen dedisse lusitaniae et pana praefectum eius universae: that Lusitania takes its name from the lusus associated with Bacchus and the lyssa of his Bacchantes, and that Pan is its governor. Lusus is usually translated as 'game' or 'play', while lyssa is a borrowing from the Greek λυσσα, 'frenzy' or 'rage', and sometimes Rage personified; for later poets Lusus and Lyssa become flesh-and-blood companions of Bacchus. Luís de Camões' Os Lusíadas, which portrays Lusus as the founder of Lusitania, extends these ideas, which have no connection with modern etymology.
[edit] Lusitanians
The Lusitani, who were Indo-Europeans and may have come from the Alps, established themselves in the region in the 6th century BC, but historians and archeologists are still undecided about their origins. Some modern authors consider them to be an indigenous people who were celticized culturally and possibly genetically through intermarriage.
The archeologist Scarlat Lambrino defended the position that the Lusitanians were a tribal group of Celtic origin related to the Lusones (a tribe that inhabited the east of Iberia). Possibly, both tribes came from the Swiss mountains. But some prefer to see the Lusitanians as a native Iberian tribe, resulting from intermarriage between different tribes.[citation needed]
The first area colonized by the Lusitani was probably the Douro valley and the region of Beira Alta (present day Portugal); in Beira they stayed until they defeated the Celtici and other tribes, then they expanded to cover a territory that reached Estremadura before the arrival of the Romans.
[edit] War against Rome
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The Lusitani are mentioned for the first time in Livy (218 BC) and are described as Carthaginian mercenaries; they are reported as fighting against Rome in 194 BC, sometimes allied with other Celtiberian tribes.
In 179 BC the praetor Lucius Postumius Albinus celebrated a triumph over the Lusitani, but in 155 BC, on the command of Punicus (perhaps a Carthaginian general) first and Cesarus after, the Lusitani reached Gibraltar. Here they were defeated by the praetor Lucius Mummius.
Servius Sulpicius Galba organized a false armistice, but while the Lusitani celebrated this new alliance, he massacred them, selling the survivors as slaves; this caused a new rebellion led by Viriathus, who was soon killed by traitors paid by the Romans in 139BC, after having led a successful guerrilla campaign against Rome and their local allies. Romans scored other victories with proconsul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus and Gaius Marius (113 BC), but still the Lusitani resisted with a long guerilla war; they later joined Sertorius' (a renegade Roman General) troops and were finally defeated by Augustus.
152 BC - From this date onwards the Roman Republic has difficulties in recruiting soldiers for the wars in Hispania, deemed particularly brutal.
Read more at Timeline of Portuguese history (Pre-Roman).
[edit] References
- ^ Strabo, Geography, Book III, Chapter 4
- ^ An Universal History From the Earliest Account of Time, 1747, p. 22.
- ^ Charles Vallancey, Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, V.6, pt.1, 1786, p.279.
- ^ Edward Lhuyd & John O'Brien, Focalóir gaoidhilge-sax-bhéarla, or An Irish-English dictionary, 1768, p. 464.
- ^ Room,Adrian. Placenames of the World. pg 228
[edit] See also
- Lusitanians
- Lusitanian mythology
- Lusitanian language
- Ophiussa
- Portugal
- History of Portugal
- Timeline of Portuguese history
- Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula
- Balsa (Roman town)
[edit] External links
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