Cantabri

The last people in Spain to be conquered, and the reason an emperor spent two years personally directing a war in the mountains. The Cantabri lived along the northern coast in what is now Cantabria and eastern Asturias, in broken country with no cities, no coinage and no central authority - which made them impossible to defeat by beating an army or capturing a capital. They raided their southern neighbours and hired themselves out as mercenaries, including to Carthage. Rome had left them alone for nearly two centuries while controlling the rest of the peninsula, an anomaly Augustus decided to end. The Cantabrian Wars ran from 29 to 19 BC and involved as many as eight legions, a fleet landing troops behind the mountains, and Augustus himself in the field until illness forced him to Tarraco. The fighting was a matter of blockading hill forts and starving them out. Roman accounts record mass suicides by defenders, by poison from yew and by fire, rather than capture; Cantabrian prisoners crucified by the Romans were said to have sung. Agrippa finished the war and reportedly declined a triumph for it. The survivors were moved down from the hills into the plains, a standard Roman method of breaking a highland society. The victory allowed the temple of Janus in Rome to be closed, signifying peace throughout the empire. The region afterwards supplied auxiliary cavalry. Its distinctive circular ritual symbol was later adopted by regional identity movements. Augustus recorded the pacification of Spain among his own achievements. The Cantabrian coast remained thinly urbanised throughout the Roman period. Roman military camps from the war have been identified by aerial survey.

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