astapa

Updated: May 27, 2025

Astapa, a city of Spain, finding itself weak in walls and defence to withstand the Romans, the inhabitants made a heap of all their riches and furniture in the public place; and, having ranged upon this heap all the women and children, and piled them round with wood and other combustible matter to take sudden fire, and left fifty of their young men for the execution of that whereon they had resolved, they made a desperate sally, where for want of power to overcome, they caused themselves to be every man slain.

Michel de Montaigne - The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 09

They all appear to have made little distinction between the Romans and the Carthaginians; whether the troublesome guests who had established themselves in the valley of the Ebro, or those who had established themselves on the Guadalquivir, possessed a larger or smaller portion of the peninsula, was probably to the natives very much a matter of indifference; and for that reason the tenacity of partisanship so characteristic of Spain was but little prominent in this war, with isolated exceptions such as Saguntum on the Roman and Astapa on the Carthaginian side.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)

In this manner was Astapa destroyed by the sword and fire, without affording any booty to the soldiers. After the rest of the people in that quarter, influenced by fear, had made submission to him, Marcius led his victorious troops to Scipio, at Carthage.

Livy - The History of Rome, Books 27 to 36

There was a city called Astapa, which had always sided with the Carthaginians; nor was it that which drew upon it the resentment of the Romans so much as the fact, that its inhabitants harboured an extraordinary animosity against them, which was not called for by the necessities of the war.

Livy - The History of Rome, Books 27 to 36

They all appear to have made little distinction between the Romans and the Carthaginians; whether the troublesome guests who had established themselves in the valley of the Ebro, or those who had established themselves on the Guadalquivir, possessed a larger or smaller portion of the peninsula, was probably to the natives very much a matter of indifference; and for that reason the tenacity of partisanship so characteristic of Spain was but little prominent in this war, with isolated exceptions such as Saguntum on the Roman and Astapa on the Carthaginian side.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome, Book III : From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States