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Updated: June 10, 2025
In the year 154 B.C., the Lusitanians, under a chieftain called Punicus, invaded the Roman territory which the elder Scipio had conquered, and defeated two Roman governors. The Romans then sent a consular army, under Q. Fulvius Nobilior, which was ultimately defeated by the Lusitanians under Cæsarus.
The triumph after the battle of Munda subsequently to be mentioned probably had reference only to the Lusitanians who served in great numbers in the conquered army. V. VI. Second Coalition of Pompeius, Crassus, and Caesar
And on the 3d of August, 1492, the little fleet of caravels sailed from the mouth of the same river whence had once sailed the "ships of Tarshish," laden with treasure for King Solomon and "Hiram, King of Tyre." A union with Portugal the land of the Lusitanians and of Sertorius was all that was now required to make of the Spanish Peninsula one kingdom.
The territories thus won, however, could not be maintained and secured without a standing garrison, for the governor of Hither Spain had no small trouble every year with the chastisement of the Celtiberians, and the governor of the more remote province found similar employment in repelling the Lusitanians.
The Romans sought gradually to reduce to subjection the interior corresponding nearly to the two Castiles, which they comprehended under the general name of Celtiberia, while they were content with checking the incursions of the inhabitants of the western provinces, more especially those of the Lusitanians in the modern Portugal and the Spanish Estremadura, into the Roman territory; with the tribes on the north coast, the Callaecians, Asturians, and Cantabrians, they did not as yet come into contact at all.
The Romans then made a more vigorous push, and the Lusitanians gave way, and, in a little time, turned their backs. As the victors pursued them briskly, no less than twelve thousand of them were slain, and five hundred and forty taken prisoners, most of whom were horsemen. There were taken, besides, a hundred and thirty-four military standards. Of the Roman army, but seventy-three men were lost.
Matho commanded his own companions, together with the Iberians, Lusitanians, and the men of the West, and of the islands; all those who spoke Greek had asked for Spendius on account of his cleverness. Great was the stupefaction when the army was seen suddenly in motion; it stretched along beneath the mountain of Ariana on the road to Utica beside the sea.
For with two thousand six hundred men, whom for honor's sake he called Romans, combined with seven hundred Africans, who landed with him when he first entered Lusitania, together with four thousand targeteers, and seven hundred horse of the Lusitanians themselves, he made war against four Roman generals, who commanded a hundred and twenty thousand foot, six thousand horse, two thousand archers and slingers, and had cities innumerable in their power; whereas at the first he had not above twenty cities in all.
History relates, that, when he was pro-praetor of Spain, he perfidiously put to the sword thirty thousand Lusitanians, and by that means gave occasion to the war of Viriatus . His grandson being incensed against Julius Caesar, whose lieutenant he had been in Gaul, because he was through him disappointed of the consulship , joined with Cassius and Brutus in the conspiracy against him, for which he was condemned by the Pedian law.
The old tribes, the Celtiberians and Lusitanians in the central and western districts, and the Cantabrians and Basques in the north, brave as they were, were too much divided by tribal feuds to make an effectual resistance. The national party at Carthage, which wished for war, had able leaders in Hamilcar and his three sons.
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