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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 Romans named the northwest part of Hispania or the Iberian Peninsula Gallaecia after the Celtic tribes of the area the Gallaeci or Gallaecians. [1]
The Gallaic make their entry into written history in the first-century epic Punica of Silius Italicus on the First Punic War:
Gallaecia, as a region, was thus marked for the Romans as much for the Gallaeci's castros, a system of hillforts, as was for the lure of its gold mines. This culture extended over present day Galicia, the north of Portugal, the western part of Asturias, the Bierzo, and Sanabria and was distinct from the neighbouring Lusitanian culture to the south according to the classical authors Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder. [2]
At a far later date, the mythic history that was encapsulated in Lebor Gabála Érenn credited Gallaecia as the point from which the Gaels sailed to conquer Ireland, as they had Gallaecia, by force of arms.
Strabo in his Geography lists the people of the northwestern Atlantic coast of Iberia as follows:
After the Punic Wars, the Romans turned their attention to conquering Hispania. The tribe of the Gallaeci 60,000 strong, according to Paulus Orosius, faced the Roman forces in 137 BC in a battle at the river Douro (Spanish : Duero, Portuguese : Douro, Galician : Douro, Latin : Durius), which resulted in a great Roman victory, by virtue of which the Roman proconsul Decimus Junius Brutus returned a hero, receiving the agnomen Callaicus ("conqueror of the Callaicoi", a Gallaecian tribe inhabiting the southernmost region of Gallaecia in the mouth of the river Durius), his campaign followed the Atlantic coast all the way to the river Limia, but no further than the river Miño. This campaign was largely a punitive one, in the context of the aftermath of the Lusitanian wars, as the capital of the Callaici (Portus Cale) was only definitively occupied by Marcus Perpena in 74bc.
Further incursions in southern Gallaecia, included Publius Licinius Crassus's campaign of 96-94 bc.
The first incursion into Northern Gallaecia happened in 61bc, during Julius Caesar's consulship, a largely naval-based campaign across the entire Northern Hispanic coastline, defeating the Gallaecians a battle near Brigantium.
The final conquest of Gallaecia happened during the Cantabrian Wars, fought under the Emperor Augustus from 26 to 19 BC. The resistance was appalling: collective suicide rather than surrender, mothers who killed their children before committing suicide, crucified prisoners of war who sang triumphant hymns, rebellions of captives who killed their guards and returned home from Gaul.
For Rome Gallaecia was a region formed exclusively by two conventus—the Lucensis and the Bracarensis—and was distinguished clearly from other zones like the Asturica, according to written sources:
In the 3rd century, Diocletian created an administrative division which included the conventus of Gallaecia, Asturica and, perhaps, Cluniense. This province took the name of Gallaecia since Gallaecia was the most populous and important zone within the province. In 409, as Roman control collapsed, the Suebi conquests transformed Roman Gallaecia (convents Lucense and Bracarense) into the kingdom of Galicia (the Galliciense Regnum recorded by Hydatius and Gregory of Tours).
On the night of 31 December 406 AD, several Germanic barbarian tribes, the Vandals, Alans, and Suebi, swept over the Roman frontier on the Rhine. They advanced south, pillaging Gaul, and crossed the Pyrenees. They set about dividing up the Roman provinces of Carthaginiensis, Tarraconensis, Gallaecia, and Baetica. The Suebi took part of Gallaecia, where they later established a kingdom. After the Vandals and Alans left for North Africa, the Suebi took control of much of the Iberian Peninsula. However, Visigothic campaigns took much of this territory back. The Visigoths emerged victorious in the wars that followed, and eventually annexed Gallaecia.
After the Visigothic defeat and the annexation of much of Hispania by the Moors, a group of Visigothic states survived in the northern mountains, including Gallaecia. In Beatus of Liébana (d. 798), Gallaecia became used to refer to the Christian part of the Iberian peninsula, whereas Hispania was used for the Muslim one. The emirs, preferring to focus on the task of consolidation of conquered territory, ultimately never expanded into these highly defended mountains, which the Romans before them also had taken generations to incorporate.
In Charlemagne's time, bishops of Gallaecia attended the Council of Frankfurt in 794. During his residence in Aachen, he received embassies from Alfonso II of Gallaecia, according to the Frankish chronicles.
Sancho III of Navarre in 1029 refers to Bermudo III of León as Imperator domus Vermudus in Gallaecia.
Lusitania was an ancient Iberian Roman province encompassing most of modern-day Portugal and a large portion of western Spain. Romans named the region after the Lusitanians, an Indo-European tribe inhabiting the lands.
Hispania Tarraconensis was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania. It encompassed much of the northern, eastern and central territories of modern Spain along with modern northern Portugal. Southern Spain, the region now called Andalusia, was the province of Hispania Baetica. On the Atlantic west lay the province of Lusitania, partially coincident with modern-day Portugal.
Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus was a consul of the Roman Republic for the year 138 BC together with Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio. He was an optimate politician and a military commander in Hispania and in Illyria. He was the son of Marcus Junius Brutus and brother of Marcus Junius Brutus. He had a son also named Decimus Junius Brutus and his grandson was Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus.
Lusitanian mythology is the mythology of the Lusitanians, an Indo-European speaking people of western Iberia, in what was then known as Lusitania. In present times, the territory comprises the central part of Portugal and small parts of Extremadura and Salamanca.
The Lusitanians were an Indo-European-speaking people living in the far west of the Iberian Peninsula, in present-day central Portugal and Extremadura and Castilla y Leon of Spain. After its conquest by the Romans, the land was subsequently incorporated as a Roman province named after them (Lusitania).
The Coelerni were an ancient Celtic tribe of Gallaecia in Hispania, part of Calaician or Gallaeci people, living in what was to become the Roman Province of Hispania Tarraconensis, in what is now the southern part of the province of Ourense.
This is a historical timeline of Portugal.
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, where Galicia is located, has been inhabited for at least 500,000 years, first by Neanderthals and then by modern humans. From about 4500 BC, it was inhabited by a megalithic culture, which entered the Bronze Age about 1500 BC. These people would become the Gallaeci, and they would be conquered by the Roman Empire in the first and second centuries AD. As the Roman Empire declined, Galicia would be conquered and ruled by various Germanic tribes, notably the Suebi and Visigoths, until the 9th century. Then the Muslim conquest of Iberia reached Galicia, although they never quite controlled the area.
The Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Galicia or Suebi Kingdom of Galicia, was a Germanic post-Roman kingdom that was one of the first to separate from the Roman Empire. Based in the former Roman provinces of Gallaecia and northern Lusitania, the de facto kingdom was established by the Suebi about 409, and during the 6th century it became a formally declared kingdom identifying with Gallaecia. It maintained its independence until 585, when it was annexed by the Visigoths, and was turned into the sixth province of the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania.
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.
The following is a history of Galicia, a subsection of the Iberian Peninsula.
Galicians are a Romance-speaking European ethnic group from northwestern Spain; they are closely related to the northern Portuguese people and have their historic homeland in Galicia, in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. Two Romance languages are widely spoken and official in Galicia: the native Galician and Spanish.
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 of Portugal, from the 9th century onwards.
Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Roman Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. During the Principate, Hispania Ulterior was divided into two new provinces, Baetica and Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was renamed Hispania Tarraconensis. Subsequently, the western part of Tarraconensis was split off, initially as Hispania Nova, which was later renamed "Callaecia". From Diocletian's Tetrarchy onwards, the south of the remainder of Tarraconensis was again split off as Carthaginensis, and all of the mainland Hispanic provinces, along with the Balearic Islands and the North African province of Mauretania Tingitana, were later grouped into a civil diocese headed by a vicarius. The name Hispania was also used in the period of Visigothic rule. The modern place names of Spain and Hispaniola are both derived from Hispania.
The Conventus Bracarensis, was a Roman administrative unit located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, in Gallaecia. Its name derives from its capital Bracara Augusta, a citadel established by the Romans, which became the convent's administrative center. Its southern limit was the river Douro, it marked the streak with the Roman province of Lusitania. In the north, its limits were the river Verdugo, and the river Sil, both marked the border with the Conventus lucensis. Its eastern borders were marked by the river Navea, a tributary of the Sil, that limited with the Conventus asturicensis.
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.
The Gallaeci or Callaeci were an ancient Celtic tribe of Gallaecia, living in the northwest of modern Portugal, roughly in today's western half of the Porto District, from the west of the Tâmega river valley to the Atlantic coast in the west and north of the Douro river.