Augustus' War in Spain (26-25 B. C.)

Abstract

Concerning the provinces of Spain one might have written in 26 B.C. what Tacitus wrote of the Germans more than a century later: triumphati magis quam victi sunt. Between 36 and 26 no less than six triumphs over the Spanish provinces had been granted to returning generals,' and yet, even before the last had been celebrated, the dauntless tribes of the northern part of the peninsula invaded once more the Romanized districts south of the Cantabrian Pyrenees. The war which ensued has received inadequate treatment at the hands of modern historians of Rome, none of whom has examined critically the sources for our knowledge of the campaigns, or studied them with the aid of inscriptions and the material afforded by ancient itineraries and modern maps. Schiller2 repeated the meager narrative of the sources, merely adding a few modern place-names, without subjecting this narrative to criticism or applying to the vague statements of the ancients the evidence afforded by modern topographical study. Still less satisfactory is the treatment which the war received from Gardthausen3 and von Domaszewski.4 Except for Gardthausen's enumeration of the legions composing the army and his attempt to correct an error of the sources in regard to the legates charged with the conduct of a particular campaign, these historians contented themselves with a paraphrase of the sources and omitted entirely any discussion of the topographical problems. And yet the Spanish war was the only one which Augustus, after his assumption of the imperium in 27, conducted in person,5 and his subjugation of the peninsula stands foremost among his boasts of military prowess.6 It seems justifiable therefore, to attempt to retell the story of this