Geography

​All the mountaineers are simple, water-drinkers, and sleep on the ground, letting their hair flow deep down like women, though they fight with their foreheads bound with headbands. And they eat goat’s meat especially, and sacrifice to Ares a goat, and also the captives and horses; and they also offer hecatombs of each kind in the Greek fashion. They also celebrate gymnastic, equestrian, and heavy-armored contests, in boxing and running, in skirmishing, and in fighting in bands. The mountaineers for two-thirds of the year live on acorn-meal, having dried and crushed it, then ground it and made it into bread so as to store it up for a time. They also use beer; but wine is scarce, and what is produced they quickly consume in feasting with their kinsfolk; and instead of olive oil they use butter. They dine sitting down on benches built around the walls, taking their seats according to age and rank; and the dinner is passed around. They use wooden vessels, just as the Celts do. And at their drinking-bouts they dance to the flute and the trumpet, dancing in chorus, but also leaping up and crouching down; and in Bastetania women also dance mixed with men, holding their hands. They all wear black, for the most part in coarse cloaks, in which they also sleep on their straw beds; and the women go about in tunics and flowered dresses. And instead of coin, those who live deep in the interior practice bartering of goods, or they cut off pieces from a silver plate and give them. And those who are condemned to death they cast down from precipices, and parricides they stone to death outside the borders. They marry just as the Greeks do. The sick, just as the Assyrians did of old, they expose on the streets for the sake of advice from those who have experienced the disease. And they used leather boats until the time of Brutus because of the tides and the shallows, but now even dugout canoes are already rare. Their salt is purple, but when crushed it becomes white. This is the mode of life of the mountaineers, as I said—I mean those who bound the northern side of Iberia, the Callaicans, Asturians, and Cantabrians, as far as the Vascones and the Pyrenees; for the lives of all of them are of a similar character. But I hesitate to multiply their names, avoiding the unpleasantness of writing them, unless it is a pleasure to someone to hear the names of the Pleutaurians, the Bardyetans, the Allotrigans, and other names still worse and more obscure than these.

​Their harshness and wildness have resulted not only from their being at war, but also from their isolation; for the voyage to their country is long, as are the roads, and because they are difficult to associate with, they have lost all sociability and humanity. They suffer from this to a less degree now, however, because of the peace and the temporary stay of the Romans among them; but those with whom this happens to a less degree are more difficult and beastly. And since the ruggedness of their regions and mountains is of such a character for some, it is natural that such strangeness is intensified. But now, as I said, all warfare has ceased; for Caesar Augustus subdued the Cantabrians and their neighbors, who even down to his time were most of all keeping up the brigandage; and instead of plundering the allies of the Romans, the Coniacans and the Plentuisans, who dwell near the sources of the Hebrus, now campaign on behalf of the Romans. And Tiberius, who succeeded him, by placing a military force of three legions in these places—the force appointed by Caesar Augustus—has succeeded in making some of them not only peaceable but even civilized already.