The Iberian Peninsula in the time of Hadrian (ruled 117–138 AD) showing, in western Iberia, the imperial province of Lusitania (Portugal and Extremadura)
After Romans arrived in the territory during the 2nd century BC, a war with Lusitanian tribes ensued between 155 and 139 BC, with the Roman province eventually established in 27 BC.
In modern parlance, Lusitania is often synonymous with Portugal, despite the province's capital being located in modern Mérida, Spain.
Etymology
The etymology of the name of the Lusitani (who gave the Roman province its name) 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 (unattested) root *tan-, supposed to mean "tribe", while others derived the name from Lucis, an ancient people mentioned in Avienius' 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.
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 λυσσα, "frenzy" or "rage", and sometimes Rage personified; for later poets, Lusus and Lyssa become flesh-and-blood companions (even children) of Bacchus. Luís de Camões' epic Os Lusíadas (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".
The Lusitani 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 (a tribe that inhabited the east of Iberia). 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 (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.
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
Roman conquest of Hispania
The Lusitani are mentioned for the first time in Livy who describes them as fighting for the Carthaginians in 218 BCE; they are reported as fighting against Rome in 194 BC, sometimes allied with Celtiberian tribes.
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, but they were not finally defeated until the reign of Augustus (around 28–24 BC).
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 (conventus), that counseled the Governor:
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.
^O'Brien, John (1768). "Ta'n & Tàin". Focalóir gaoidhilge-sax-bhéarla, or An Irish-English dictionary. Nicolas-Francis Valleyre. p. 464. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
^Suetonius, Cae, 18; Appian, BH, 102; Plut, Cae., 12; Dio, 37 & 52, 153-154, Valleius Patraculus, II, 52-5; Antonio Santosuosso, Storming the Heavans: Soldiers, Emperors, and Civilians in the Roman Empire (London: Pilmico/Random House, 2011), p. 57-58; Casey Simpson, "Caesar or Rex?" (Honors thesis, Ball State University, 2004); Stephen Dando-Collins, Legions of Rome (New York: Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, 2010), pp. 28, 61-63; CAH, both editions
^Abascal, J. M. "Lucius Caecilius Rufus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-04-06. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Abascal, J. M. "Lucius Calventius Vetus Carminius". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-04-05. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Abascal, J. M. "[Marcus?] Porcius?] Cato". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-04-05. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Abascal, J. M. "Otón". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-06-08. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Unless otherwise noted, the governors from 75 to the end of Hadrian's reign are taken from Werner Eck, "Jahres- und Provinzialfasten der senatorischen Statthalter von 69/70 bis 138/139", Chiron, 12 (1982), pp. 281-362; 13 (1983), pp. 147-237.
^Abascal, J. M. "Quintus Acutius Faienanus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-04-05. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Abascal, J. M. "Caius Oppius Sabinus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-04-06. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^ Géza Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antoninen (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1977), p. 256
^Abascal, J. M. "Quadratus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-04-05. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Abascal, J. M. "Sextus Tigidius Perennis". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-03-27. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^ Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare, p. 290
^ Paul Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1989), p. 289
^Abascal, J. M. "Decimus Iunius Coelianus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-06-03. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Paul Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1989), p. 289.
^Abascal, J. M. "Rutilus Pudens Crispinus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-09-26. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Abascal, J. M. "Aemilius Aemilianus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-04-06. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Abascal, J. M. "Datianus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-04-06. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Abascal, J. M. "Iulius Saturninus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-04-06. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
^Abascal, J. M. "Vettius Agorius Praetextatus". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. Real Academia de la Historia. Archived from the original on 2023-06-01. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
As found in the Notitia Dignitatum. Provincial administration reformed and dioceses established by Diocletian, c. 293. Permanent praetorian prefectures established after the death of Constantine I. Empire permanently partitioned after 395. Exarchates of Ravenna and Africa established after 584. After massive territorial losses in the 7th century, the remaining provinces were superseded by the theme system in c. 640–660, although in Asia Minor and parts of Greece they survived under the themes until the early 9th century.
Roman Hispania after Claudius: Conventus juridici (Emeritensis, Scalabitanus and Pacensis)
Roman Hispania under Diocletian: Lusitania found in the west
Roman Empire in 300 AD: Diocesis Hispaniarum in the west
Roman Theatre of Metellinum (Medellín)![]]Pax Iulia (Beja)](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Arco_Romano.jpg/240px-Arco_Romano.jpg)
Ruins of Conimbriga
Roman bridge of Salmantica (Salamanca)
Roman arch of Egitandiorum (Idanha-a-Velha)
![]]Pax Iulia (Beja)](/key/File:Arco_Romano.jpg)
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