Lusitania

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This article is about the Roman province. For the ship, see RMS Lusitania. For
other uses, see Lusitania (disambiguation).
ProvinciaHispaniaLusitania
Province of the Roman Empire
?
27 BC409410 AD ?

?
Location of Lusitania
Capital Emerita Augusta (Mrida)
Historical era Roman Empire
Established 27 BC
Disestablished 409410 AD
Today part of Portugal
Spain

The Iberian peninsula in the time of Hadrian (ruled 117138 AD), showing, in
western Iberia, the imperial province of Lusitania (Portugal and Extremadura)

Map of Roman Hispania around 10 AD; Lusitania is colored in orange

Lusitania (?lu?s?'te?ni?, Portuguese Lusitnia, Spanish Lusitania) or Hispania
Lusitana was an ancient Iberian 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 Mrida, Spain), and it was initially
part of the Roman Republic province of Hispania Ulterior, before becoming a
province of its own in the Roman Empire. Romans first came to the territory around
the mid-2nd century BC.[1] A war with Lusitanian tribes followed, from 155 to 139
BC. In 27 BC, the province was created.[2]

Contents [hide]
1 Origin of the name
2 Lusitanians
3 War against Rome
4 Roman province
4.1 Division under Augustus (2520 BC)
4.2 Division under Diocletian
4.3 Governors
4.4 Coloniae and Municipia
5 Notable Lusitanians
6 Legacy of the name
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
Origin of the name[edit]
The etymology of the name of the Lusitani (who gave the Roman province their name)
remains unclear. Popular etymology connected the name to a supposed Roman demigod
Lusus, whereas some early-modern scholars[which] suggested that Lus was a form of
the Celtic Lugus followed by another (unattested) root tan-, supposed to mean
tribe,[3] while others derived the name from Lucis, an ancient people mentioned in
Avienus' Ora Maritima (4th century AD) and from tan (-stan in Iranian), or from
tain, meaning a region or implying a country of waters, a root word that formerly
meant a prince or sovereign governor of a region.[4][5][6]

Ancient Romans, such as Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 3.5) and Varro (116 27
BC, cited by Pliny), speculated that the name Lusitania had Roman origins, as when
Pliny says lusum enim Liberi Patris aut lyssam cum eo bacchantium nomen dedisse
Lusitaniae et Pana praefectum eius universae [Lusitania takes its name from the
Lusus associated with Bacchus and the Lyssa of his Bacchantes, and Pan is its
governor].

Lusus is usually translated as game or play, while lyssa is a borrowing from the
Greek ??ssa, frenzy or rage, and sometimes Rage personified; for later poets, Lusus
and Lyssa become flesh-and-blood companions (even children) of Bacchus. Lus de
Cames' epic Os Lusadas (1572), which portrays Lusus as the founder of Lusitania,
extends these ideas, which have no connection with modern etymology.

In his work, Geography, the classical geographer Strabo (died ca. 24 AD) suggests a
change had occurred in the use of the name Lusitanian. He mentions a group who had
once been called Lusitanians living north of the Douro river but were called in his
day Callacans.[7]

Lusitanians[edit]

Iberian Peninsula at about 300 BC.[8]

Main article Lusitanians
The Lusitani, who were Indo-European speakers, established themselves in the region
in the 6th century BC, but historians and archeologists are still undecided about
their ethnogenesis. Some modern authors consider them to be an indigenous people
who were Celticized culturally and possibly also through intermarriage.[1]

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). Some have claimed that both tribes came from the Swiss mountains.
[citation needed] Others argue that the evidence points to the Lusitanians being a
native Iberian tribe, resulting from intermarriage between different local 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.

War against Rome[edit]

[show] v t e
Roman conquest of Hispania
Main article Lusitanian War
And yet the country north of the Tagus, Lusitania, is the greatest of the Iberian
nations, and is the nation against which the Romans waged war for the longest times

?Strabo[9]

Roman conquest of Hispania

The Lusitani are mentioned for the first time in Livy (218 BC) and are described as
fighting for the Carthaginians; they are reported as fighting against Rome in 194
BC, sometimes allied with 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) first and Cesarus (?a?sa???) after, the Lusitani reached Gibraltar.
Here they were defeated by the praetor Lucius Mummius.

From 152 BC onwards, the Roman Republic had difficulties in recruiting soldiers for
the wars in Hispania, deemed particularly brutal. In 150 BC, Servius Sulpicius
Galba organised a false armistice. 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 after many attempts killed by traitors paid by the Romans in
139 BC, after having led a successful guerrilla campaign against Rome and their
local allies. Two years after, in 137 BC Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus led a
successful campaign against the Lusitani, reaching as far north as the Minho river.

Romans scored other victories with proconsul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus and
Gaius Marius (elected in 113 BC), but still the Lusitani resisted with a long
guerilla war; they later joined Sertorius' (a renegade Roman General) troops
(around 80 BC) and Julius Caesar conducted a successful campaign against them in
61-60 BC,[10] but they were not finally defeated until the reign of Augustus
(around 28-24 BC).

Roman province[edit]

Roman Hispania under Diocletian (AD 293); Lusitania found in the extreme west

Tower of Centum Cellas

Roman Temple of vora

Roman Theatre (Mrida)

Division under Augustus (2520 BC)[edit]
With Lusitania (and Asturia and Gallaecia), Rome had completed the conquest of the
Iberian peninsula, which was then divided by Augustus (2520 BC[citation needed] or
16-13 BC[1]) into the eastern and northern Hispania Tarraconensis, the southwestern
Hispania Baetica and the western Provincia Lusitana. Originally, Lusitania included
the territories of Asturia and Gallaecia, but these were later ceded to the
jurisdiction of the new Provincia Tarraconensis and the former remained as
Provincia Lusitania et Vettones. Its northern border was along the Douro river,
while on its eastern side its border passed through Salmantica (Salamanca)and
Caesarobriga (Talavera de la Reina) to the Anas (Guadiana) river.

Between 28-24 BC Augustus' military campaigns pacified all Hispania under Roman
rule, with the foundation of Roman cities like Asturica Augusta (Astorga) and
Bracara Augusta (Braga) to the north, and to the south Emerita Augusta (Mrida)
(settled with the emeriti of the Legio V Alaudae and Legio X Gemina legions).

Between the time of Augustus and Claudius, the province was divided into three
conventus iuridicus, territorial units presided by capital cities with a court of
justice and joint Romanindigenous people assemblies (conventus), that counseled the
Governor

Conventus Emeritensis, with capital in Emerita Augusta (Mrida, Spain)

Conventus Scalabitanus, with capital in Scalabis Iulia (Santarm, Portugal)
Conventus Pacensis, with capital in Pax Iulia (Beja, Portugal)
The conventus ruled of a total of 46 populis, 5 being Roman colonies[11] (Emerita
Augusta (Mrida, Spain), Pax Iulia (Beja), Scalabis (Santarm), Norba Caesarina and
Metellinum). Felicitas Iulia Olisipo (Lisbon, which was a Roman law municipality)
and 3 other towns had the old Latin status[12] (Ebora (vora), Myrtilis Iulia
(Mrtola) and Salacia (Alccer do Sal). The other 37 were of stipendiarii class,
among which Aeminium (Coimbra), Balsa (Tavira), or Mirobriga (Santiago do Cacm).
Other cities include Ossonoba (Faro), Cetobriga (Tria, Setbal), Collippo (Leiria)
or Arabriga (Alenquer).