Quote Originally Posted by Aymar de Bois Mauri
Sorry but you are completelly mistaken. That "benevolent" action was unavoidable and imposed by two main factors:

-The constant rebellions in the area, when under Roman administration.
-The several treaties enforced by Viriatos on Rome in earlier times, enforced them to take in to consideration other administrative approaches after conquest.
As I said right after I said it could have been an example of Roman benevolence... personally I realized the former was probably bullocks while the pragmatic approach was so Roman that it had a large chance of being correct.

Please do not incurr in the mistake of confusing Portugal with Lusitania. They are different areas with just a central common part. The Lusitania area wasn't mostly celtiberian. In fact, that is a bit of a stretch. It was a mantle of several cultural, religious and ethnic influnces. But prodominantly indo-european. The area that Portugal presently ocuppies had that and typically Celtic areas as you can see in the first map. So, we can say 50% of each influence in the area that Portugal ocupies today.
Do not worry, I did not. I merely mentioned 'modern Portugal' as a region to show the approximate area where the Lusitani lived.

And as I deduce from the map you provided, Lusitania was in south under Turtedanic influence (in the modern Algarve), in the approximate center (not completely though) under the influence of the confusing nomer of 'Iberian', and in the north under Celtiberian influence, which was, IIRC, not that very much different from Iberian.

What I did not know, however, was that the region was already culturally distinct, to an extent, in the day.

And I called Lusitania 'so Celtic' because there was a distinctly Celtic tribe (of course not the same as the Celts of the La Tène culture, but apparently more distinctly Celtic than their Celtiberian cousins) living inside it, the 'Celtii' in my post, by which I meant the Celticii. These Celticii were not part of the Halstatt migrations, but came later, when the mainland Atlantic Celts had advanced into their La Tène culture, correct? Which might explain their more distinctly Celtic nature.

In any case, I by no means meant to say that Lusitania was predominately under Celtic influence.



~Wiz