Lusitania was an ancient Iberian Roman province located where modern Portugal and a portion of western Spain lie. It was named after the Lusitani or Lusitanian people.
The Marcomanni were a Germanic people that established a powerful kingdom north of the Danube, somewhere near modern Bohemia, during the peak of power of the nearby Roman Empire. According to Tacitus and Strabo, they were Suebian.
Raetia was a province of the Roman Empire, named after the Rhaetian people. It bordered on the west with the country of the Helvetii, on the east with Noricum, on the north with Vindelicia, on the south-west with Transalpine Gaul and on the south with Venetia et Histria, a region of Roman Italy.
Braga is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality had a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants, representing the seventh largest municipality in Portugal by population. Its area is 183.40 km2. Its agglomerated urban area extends from the Cávado River to the Este River. It is the most populated urban area in Portugal outside Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Areas.
Gallaecia, also known as Hispania Gallaecia, was the name of a Roman province in the north-west of Hispania, approximately present-day Galicia, northern Portugal, Asturias and Leon and the later Kingdom of Gallaecia. The Roman cities included the port Cale (Porto), the governing centers Bracara Augusta (Braga), Lucus Augusti (Lugo) and Asturica Augusta (Astorga) and their administrative areas Conventus bracarensis, Conventus lucensis and Conventus asturicensis.
The Astures or Asturs, also named Astyrs, were the Hispano-Celtic inhabitants of the northwest area of Hispania that now comprises almost the entire modern autonomous community of Principality of Asturias, the modern province of León, and the northern part of the modern province of Zamora, and eastern Trás os Montes in Portugal. They were a horse-riding highland cattle-raising people who lived in circular huts of stone drywall construction. The Albiones were a major tribe from western Asturias. Isidore of Seville gave an etymology as coming from a river Asturia, identified by David Magie with Órbigo river in the plain of León, by others the modern Esla river.
The Bracari or Callaeci Bracari were an ancient Celtic tribe of Gallaecia, living in the northwest of modern Portugal, in the province of Minho, between the rivers Tâmega and Cávado. After the conquest of the region beginning in 136BC, the Romans established the Augustan citadel of Bracara, modern Braga, in 20 BC.
The Gallaeci were a Celtic tribal complex who inhabited Gallaecia, the north-western corner of Iberia, a region roughly corresponding to what is now the Norte Region in northern Portugal, and the Spanish regions of Galicia, western Asturias and western León before and during the Roman period. They spoke a Q-Celtic language related to Northeastern Hispano-Celtic, called Gallaecian or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic. The region was annexed by the Romans in the time of Caesar Augustus during the Cantabrian Wars, a war which initiated the assimilation of the Gallaeci into Latin culture.
The Iberian Peninsula has been inhabited for at least 500,000 years, first by Neanderthals and then by modern humans.
Castro culture is the archaeological term for the material culture of the northwestern regions of the Iberian Peninsula from the end of the Bronze Age until it was subsumed by Roman culture. It is the culture associated with the Gallaecians and Astures.
Minho was a former province in Portugal, established in 1936 and dissolved in 1976. It consisted of 23 municipalities, with its capital in the city of Braga. Today, the area would include the districts of Braga and Viana do Castelo. Minho has substantial Celtic influences and shares many cultural traits with neighbouring Galicia in Northwestern Spain. The region was part of the Roman Province and early Germanic medieval Kingdom of Gallaecia. Historical remains of Celtic Minho include Briteiros Iron Age Hillfort, the largest Gallaecian native stronghold in the Entre Douro e Minho region, in North Portugal. The University of Minho, founded in 1973, takes its name from the former province.
The Via Augusta was the longest and busiest of the major roads built by the Romans in ancient Hispania. According to historian Pierre Sillières, who has supervised excavation of Roman sites in Spain to identify the exact route followed by the Via Augusta, it was more a system of roads than a single road. Approximately 1,500 km (930 mi) long, the Via Augusta was built to link Spain with Italy, running from the interior city of Gades (Cádiz) to the Pyrenees Mountains along inland valleys parallel to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. As the main axis of the road network in Roman Hispania, it appears in ancient sources such as the itinerary inscribed on the Vicarello Cups as well in as the Antonine Itinerary.
A Rúa is a mostly rural Galician municipality in the comarca of Valdeorras, eastern province of Ourense, Spain, 101 km (63 mi) from the provincial capital, Ourense. An inhabitant of the area is known as a Rués.
Portus Cale was an ancient town and port in present-day northern Portugal, in the area of today's Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia. The name of the town eventually influenced the name of the subsequent country Portugal, from the 9th century onwards.
The Conventus Lucensis, was a Roman administrative unit located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, in Gallaecia. Its name derives from its capital Lucus Augusti, the most important city in this convent, economical and administrative center of the country. Its Southern borders were marked by the river Verdugo, and the river Sil (limit with the Conventus bracarensis, in the north the coastline from Morrazo until river Navia, in the East the Ancares' mountains and the Conventus asturicensis.
The territory that is modern-day Portugal would be Romanized in the sequence of the Second Punic War, through the Roman conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.
The Roman Thermae of Maximinus, are the archaeological ruins of a monumental building and public baths, whose construction was integrated into the urban renewal of the civitas of Bracara Augusta, the Roman provincial capital of Gallaecia. The large public/civic construction consisted of a building, housing the baths, and a theatre, although the archaeological excavations continue.
The Battle of the Nervasos Mountains occurred in the year 419 and was fought between a coalition of Suebi, led by King Hermeric together with allied Roman Imperial forces stationed in the Province of Hispania, against the combined forces of the Vandals and Alans who were led by their King Gunderic. This battle occurred in the context of a contemporary Germanic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. The battle took place in what is today the Province of León, Spain, and resulted in a Roman/Suebian Victory.
The name of Galicia, an autonomous community of Spain and former kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula, derives from the Latin toponym Callaecia, later Gallaecia, related to the name of an ancient tribe that resided north of the Douro river, the Gallaeci or Callaeci in Latin, or Kallaikói (καλλαικoι) in Greek.
This article covers the history of ancient Portugal, the period between Prehistoric Iberia and County of Portugal.
