Iberes

The Iberians proper occupied the Mediterranean coast of the peninsula from Andalusia to the Rhone, and they are the people from whom Greeks and Romans took the name for the whole landmass. They were not a single nation but a series of related peoples - Edetani, Contestani, Ilergetes, Indiketes - sharing a language, a script and a material culture, and organised in fortified towns on hills above the coastal plain. Contact with Phoenician and Greek traders from the eighth century BC gave them the potter's wheel, the olive and the vine, coinage and writing; the Iberian script is derived from Phoenician and Greek models but remains only partly understood, since the language behind it has no known relatives. Their sculpture is the most striking thing they left: the Lady of Elche, a limestone bust with an elaborate headdress found in 1897, is the best-known object from pre-Roman Spain. Politically they were the ground on which other powers fought. Carthage recruited Iberian infantry in large numbers - they made up much of Hannibal's army in Italy - and Rome recruited them in turn, and the Second Punic War was fought across their territory by armies substantially composed of them. Roman annexation followed the Carthaginian defeat and was essentially complete on the coast by the early second century BC, long before the interior. The coastal cities became Roman municipalities early, and Iberian ceased to be written by the first century AD. The Lady of Elche's authenticity was questioned for decades and is now generally accepted. Iberian mercenaries appear in Greek and Carthaginian armies across the Mediterranean, including in Sicily. Their falcata sword, curved and single-edged, was as distinctive as the Celtiberian straight blade.

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