Greek Texts & Translations

SPAIN, the eastern and southern parts of which were, since the 2d Punic war, governed by the Romans under a kind of military occupation without being reduced to the form of regular provinces, was always in a disturbed state, partly from sudden uprisings of various tribes against the Roman authority, and partly from numerous bodies of banditti, who seized strongholds or fortified towns and carried on their depredations from these centres. Hence it had been the policy of the Roman praetors and consuls to insist on the demolition of fortresses and city walls, as we learn from the accounts of Cato in B.C. 195 and others. In B.C. 177 Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus had inflicted a severe defeat upon the Celtiberians, and had made a settlement of the country, which for a few years produced comparative quiet and content. But in B.C. 154 an outbreak of the Lusitani led to a considerable disaster to the Roman army under Lucius Mummius; and when the consul Q. Fulvius Nobilior arrived in B.C. 153, he found that the war had accordingly spread to the Celtiberian tribes, the Belli and Titthi, who attempted to build the walls of Segeda. On Nobilior ordering them to desist, in accordance with Gracchan settlement, most of them obeyed after some resistance, but some of them fled to the Arevacae (near the sources of the Douro and Tagus); and this powerful tribe, after defeating the Roman army, entrenched themselves in Numantia, under the walls of which Nobilior sustained further losses. He was superseded in B.C. 152 by Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who, partly by strategy, and partly by administrative skill and conciliation, restored the Roman fortunes to a better position. The Belli and Titthi became allies of Rome, and the Arevacae at least thought it worth while to ask for a truce to enable them to send envoys to Rome to arrange peace.—Appian, Hispan.
44-50.