Lusitania


Lusitania or Hispania Lusitana was an ancient Iberian Roman province located where modern Portugal and part of western Spain lie. It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people.
Its capital was Emerita Augusta, 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. A war with Lusitanian tribes followed, from 155 to 139 BC. In 27 BC, the province was created.

Origin of the name

The etymology of the name of the Lusitani remains unclear. Popular etymology connected the name to a supposed Roman demigod Lusus, whereas some early-modern scholars suggested that Lus was a form of the Celtic Lugus followed by another root *tan-, supposed to mean "tribe", while others derived the name from Lucis, an ancient people mentioned in Avienus' Ora Maritima and from tan, 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.
Ancient Romans, such as Pliny the Elder and Varro, 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" .
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' epic Os Lusíadas, 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 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".

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.
The archeologist Scarlat Lambrino defended the position that the Lusitanians were a tribal group of Celtic origin related to the Lusones. Some have claimed that both tribes came from the Swiss mountains. Others argue that the evidence points to the Lusitanians being a native Iberian tribe, resulting from intermarriage between different local tribes.
The first area colonized by the Lusitani was probably the Douro valley and the region of Beira Alta ; 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

The Lusitani are mentioned for the first time in Livy 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 first and Cesarus 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, but still the Lusitani resisted with a long guerilla war; they later joined Sertorius' troops and Julius Caesar conducted a successful campaign against them in 61-60 BC, but they were not finally defeated until the reign of Augustus.

Roman province

Division under Augustus (25–20 BC)

With Lusitania, Rome had completed the conquest of the Iberian peninsula, which was then divided by Augustus 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 and Caesarobriga to the Anas river.
Between 28-24 BC Augustus' military campaigns pacified all Hispania under Roman rule, with the foundation of Roman cities like Asturica Augusta and Bracara Augusta to the north, and to the south Emerita Augusta .
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 Roman/indigenous people assemblies, that counseled the Governor:
The conventus ruled of a total of 46 populis, 5 being Roman colonies, Pax Iulia, Scalabis. Felicitas Iulia Olisipo and 3 other towns had the old Latin status, Myrtilis Iulia and Salacia. The other 37 were of stipendiarii class, among which Aeminium, Balsa, or Mirobriga. Other cities include Ossonoba, Cetobriga, Collippo or Arabriga.

Division under Diocletian

Under Diocletian, Lusitania kept its borders and was ruled by a praeses, later by a consularis; finally, in 298 AD, it was united with the other provinces to form the Diocesis Hispaniarum.

Governors

As with the Roman names of many European countries, Lusitania was and is often used as an alternative name for Portugal, especially in formal or literary and poetic contexts. The 16th-century colony that would eventually become Brazil was initially founded as "New Lusitania". In common use are such terms as Lusophone, meaning Portuguese-speaking, and Lusitanic, referring to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries—once Portugal's colonies and presently independent countries still sharing some common heritage. Prior to his invasion in 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte proposed the establishment of a French-backed puppet Kingdom of Northern Lusitania as one of the successor states to Portugal under the assumption that such a campaign would result in an easy French victory.
The province was also the namesake of the North Atlantic ocean liner RMS Lusitania infamous for being torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1915. The ship’s owners the Cunard Line commonly named their vessels after Roman provinces with the Lusitania so being called after the Roman Iberian province to the north of the Strait of Gibraltar while her sister ship RMS Mauretania was named after the Roman North African province on the south side of the strait.