Viriathus — The Shepherd King of Lusitania
Viriathus fought Rome in Iberia for eight years and was killed by his own envoys. He was a Lusitanian, from what is now central Portugal, and according to the sources had been a shepherd, then a hunter, then a leader of men. His war began with a massacre. The praetor Servius Sulpicius Galba invited the Lusitanians to settle in 150 BC, promised them land, separated them into three groups on the pretext of assigning territory, disarmed them and had them killed — some 9,000 dead and 20,000 sold into slavery. Viriathus was one of the few who escaped. Galba was prosecuted in Rome and acquitted after distributing money and bringing his weeping children into court. Viriathus took command of the survivors and spent the following years destroying Roman armies in the peninsula by ambush and feigned retreat, defeating four praetors in succession and at one point surrounding a consular army and letting it go on terms. The senate ratified a treaty in 140 BC recognising him as a friend of the Roman people, and then repudiated it. The Roman commander Servilius Caepio, unable to beat him, bribed three of his envoys — Audax, Ditalcus and Minurus — who killed him in his sleep in 139 BC. The story that Caepio then refused to pay them, saying that Rome did not reward those who murdered their own commanders, is told by the same sources that record the bribe. Iberia was not fully subdued for another century. He was given an enormous funeral by his own people with games and sacrifices, which is the last thing the Roman sources record about him. Portugal and Spain have both claimed him as a national ancestor since the nineteenth century, and there are statues of him in both.
- Year: 147 BCE
- Category: Military
