Celtiberi were the most warlike people in Spain, and were celebrated for their bravery and the obstinacy with which they resisted the arms of Rome, under their chieftain Viriathus, or as Strabo calls him, Uriathus. Posidonius reported that a tribute of 600 talents was exacted from the Celtiberi, an argument that they were a numerous and rich people, though inhabiting a country which is termed by Strabo-apáλνπρov -hard to cultivate. Polybius asserted that Tiberius Gracchus destroyed three hundred cities of the Celtiberi; on which relation Strabo observes, that the country is incapable of containing so many, by reason of its barrenness and the rudeness of the people: "neither do the Spaniards," as he says, "generally dwell in large cities, but in rural villages, with the exception of those who inhabit the coast of the Mediterranean.” The Celtiberi had however some towns which were judged by Strabo worthy of the name of cities. The whole nation was divided into four tribes, of which the Arevaci, dwelling towards the south-east, and near the Carpetani and the sources of the Tagus, were the most powerful; their capital, Numantia was the most celebrated. Segida and Pallantia were likewise cities of the Arevaci. Scgobriga and Bilbilis, the former bearing a Celtic, the latter an Euskarian name, were also cities of the Celtiberi. Celtiberia was celebrated for a breed of horses of great speed and variegated in colour, which, according to Strabo, changed their hue when brought into the outer parts of Spain.

The Celtiberians are described by Diodorus, who represents them as fierce and rude people. He says, they wore black, rough cassocks, made of wool like goats'-hair, and brazen helms, adorned outside with plumes, armed with daggers and two-edged swords.*

Among the traits recorded of the Celtiberians we find some, although few, indications of their Celtic origin.† Diodorus says that their favourite drink was made of honey, as was the metheglin of the ancient Britons. Their cavalry were accustomed to alight on the field of battle, and, like the

Diodorus, lib. v.

VOL. III.

+ Strabo, lib. iii.

Ꭰ

charioteers of the Britons, engage their enemies on foot. It does not appear from any ancient notice that the institution of the druids extended to Spain, or was ever in vogue among the Celtic inhabitants of the peninsula. All that we are told of their religion is that the Celtiberians, at the full of the moon, spent the night before their houses in dancing to the honour of some god whose name has not been preserved. It appears however that the sacred rites of the Celtiberi were different from those of the Spanish tribes who were of the unmixed Iberian race; this may be inferred from a passage of Pliny, which will presently be cited.

Celtiberia, properly so termed, occupied a wide tract in the inland parts of Spain. It comprehended a large portion of Aragon and Castile, and reached northward to the Durius, and nearly to the Iberus, or Ebro: to the northward of the Celtiberi was the tribe of Verones, who bordered on the Cantabri; their principal city was Varia, on the Ebro. Strabo assures us that the Verones or Berones, as well as the Celtiberi, were a Celtic people; and the same thing is reported of the Carpetani, whose principal town was Alea.* These tribes belong to the Celtici of the interior.

2. Another Celtic people in Spain were in the southwestern extremity. They occupied an extensive country between the Tagus and the Anas or Guadiana, now forming parts of Portugal, Algarve, and Alentejo. This region was chiefly filled by Celtic people, among whom, as Strabo observes, the Romans introduced some settlers from Lusitania. The principal city of this Celtic nation was Conistorsis. The Celtici of Conistorsis and the surrounding country partook of the civilization and mildness of their neighbours, the Turdetani, to whom they were related, as Strabo says; meaning probably by intermarriages.†

These Celtici also occupied a considerable country to the southward of the Anas, in Bætica, or Bæturia. The ancient writers are not consistent with each other in their limitation of the different regions of Spain, and in the denominations which they respectively affix to each part, and hence it is * Steph. Byzant. Voc. Alea. + δια την συγγένειαν.

difficult to follow their distribution. Pliny terms the country to the northward of the Anas, Lusitania, and the other side of that river, to the south-east, Bætica, or Bæturia. He divides Bæturia into two parts, and says that one part belonged to the Celtici, and the other to the Turduli. The passage in which he mentions the Celtic towns is a curious one, as it contains the first effort to trace the Celtici in Spain by the names of places. Pliny here anticipates the idea which became the foundation of M. de Humboldt's work. He says that the Celtici passed over the Anas into Bætica from the Celtiberi, who, according to his division of provinces, were in Lusitania. "This," as he declares, "is manifest by the resemblance of sacred rites, by their language, and by the names of their towns; 66 quæ cognominibus à Bæticis distinguuntur.' "* Ptolemy likewise mentions the Celtici of Bætica: he enumerates five cities as belonging to them, and eleven in the country of the Celtici, between the Anas and the Tagus. The Celtic country to the southward of the Anas comprehended a part of Estremadura which is cut off by that river, now termed Guadiana, as well as some parts of the kingdom of Seville, near Aroche.

It seems, from these accounts, that a very considerable part of the south-western region of Spain was the abode of a Celtic people, and that these people differed from the neighbouring tribes of Iberian descent in their religious rites, as well as in their language, in both of which they resembled the Celtiberi. This will prevent our adopting the opinion of some late writers, who imagine that the Celts of Spain had become entirely assimilated to the native Spaniards, or Euskaldunes.

3. A part of Gallicia was also the territory of a Celtic people, from whom the modern name of this province may possibly have been derived. The promontory of Nerium, or Cape Finisterre, was the abode of a tribe termed Artabri, who are said by some to have been a Celtic race.‡ Around it, and above the Artabri, were spread the villages of the Celtici. These people, according to Strabo, were descended from the * Claud. Ptolem. Geog. lib. ii. cap. 4.

+ Plin. H. N. lib. ii. cap. 1.

Pomp. Mela, lib. iv. c. 20. (vid. Ritson, p. 22.)

Celtici of the Anas. A tradition preserved by that geographer reported that an expedition had been made into their country by an army from the nations of Bætica, the Celtici having joined their forces to those of their neighbours the Turduli. After passing the river Limæus, the allied armies quarrelled, and the Celtici having dispersed themselves over the country remained in possession of it.

It has been observed by M. de Humboldt that the ancient writers term the Celts of Spain not Celti, but Celtici. From this remark, however, he ought to have excepted Strabo and Diodorus, who call them KATO, by the same denomination which they give to the people of Gaul. On the question whether the Celtic tribes were invaders of the Iberian territory, or inhabited Spain before the Euskaldunes, I shall offer a few remarks in the sequel.

SECTION V.-Iberian Tribes in Spain.

Paragraph 1.-Of the Turdetani and Turduli.

The country to the eastward of the Anas, and the Celtic districts bordering on that river, was termed Bætica, from the river Bætis, the Guadalquivir, which flows through it. It had the name of Turdetania, from its inhabitants, who were the Turdetani and Turduli. * Some writers considered them as different tribes, among whom Polybius reported that the Turduli were neighbours of the Turdetani towards the north. They were not distinguished in the time of Strabo, who says that their country was extremely rich and fertile, and second to no part of the world in all natural advantages. Turdetania comprehended most of the south of Spain, reaching from the river Anas to the mountainous country of the Oretani or La Mancha. It was said to contain, according to Strabo, two hundred cities, the principal of which were Gades or

* Strab. p. 161.

+Ptolemy, on the other hand places the Turduli to the south and eastward of the Turdetani. This double termination is elsewhere found in old Spanish names: the Basistani and Bastuli were one people.

Cadiz, Corduba or Cordova, and Hispalis, a Roman colony. The country was very productive. The exports of corn, wine, and oil were so considerable, that the ships in which they were brought to Ostia, the port-town of Rome, were nearly as numerous as those from Africa.* Among the exports were great quantities of gold and silver, the produce of mines in Turdetania, and tin from the mountainous country inhabited by barbarians above Lusitania. The Turdetani were the most civilized people in Spain and affected Roman manners. On the Bætis especially they spoke Latin, and forgot their native language. According to Strabo the river Bætis was in earlier times named the Tartessus, marking the site of the Phoenician settlement. Tartessus is mentioned by Herodotus as a place of great power and opulence at the period of the earliest voyages of the Phocæans in the Western Mediterranean. +

The same geographer informs us that the Turdetani were the most learned people in Spain; they were acquainted with the use of letters, and preserved among them records of antiquity and poems and laws composed in metre, handed down from a period, as they declared, of six thousand years.‡ Strabo adds "that the other nations of Spain likewise practised the art of writing, not with one form of characters; neither was their language the same." He does not inform us whether this difference of idiom amounted only to variety of dialect, or constituted an entire diversity. We have reason to believe, from the names of places, and the researches of M. de Humboldt, that there was no essential difference; that all the Spaniards spoke dialects of the Euskarian speech, except the Celtic people and those Iberian tribes whose idioms were

Strab. lib. iii. p. 192.

+ Herod. lib. i. c. 163

So the vulgar reading of Strabo imports. But Niebuhr has well remarked, that the expression νόμους ἐμμέτρους· ἐξακισχιλίων ἐτῶν would not even be Greek, and he proposes to read π~v for iτ~v; meaning that the laws of the Turdetanians were contained in six thousand verses, or ñ. Yet Niebuhr refers this literature of the Turdetanians to an era when the West, as he says, was still subsisting with all its original peculiarities, before it experienced any influence from Asia. And was there ever such a time? The alphabet of the Spaniards

was Phoenician.