Quote Originally Posted by Zaknafien
Sagunto hardly counts, it was Greek. But all your other examples are valid--we understand the intricacy of Celtic and Iberian hill-forts, and oppida are being worked on. But the above poster is right, theyre far from the vanilla stone walls RTW gave us.
Marcus Aurelius A. and Zaknafien,

thanks for your replies.

As a sidenote: Saguntum most likely wasn't Greek. But based on recent literature, it is possible to develop two interpretations, why some ancient sources claim Saguntum to be a "Greek city" (in particular: Appian).

a) the "benevolent variant": Saguntum - feeling threatened by the Carthagian expansion in Spain - entered an alliance with Massilia (its major trade partner). This brought no great relief, so they sought help from the only power, that already had proven its ability to contain Carthage's dreams of power: Rome. So Appian simply mistook an alliance with a Greek city for
being Greek...

b) the "malicious variant": Because Rome - according to the Ebro-Treaty - had no right to infere, they invented in the aftermath of the Punic wars motives that could justify their actions ("bellum iustum" once again): In particular they forged the content of the Ebro-Treaty claiming it already had included a special "Saguntum"-clause. Furthermore, they invented the "Greek city" Saguntum, so the intervention based on the "the friend of my friend is my friend" reasoning could be applied.

Best readings for the "malicious variant":

a) Jakob Seibert: Hannibal, Darmstadt 1993.

Here a quote taken from page 45:

"Auch Appian überlieferte, als Grenze des karthagischen Bereichs sei der Ebro festgelegt und den Römern verboten worden, Krieg gegen Völker jenseits des Ebro zu führen, die Untertanen der Karthager waren. Den Karthagern sei untersagt worden, den Ebro in kriegerischer Absicht zu überschreiten [Annotation: This Hasdrubal really must have been a Bargaining-Dummkopf!]. Auch über Sagunt soll eine Klause vereinbart worden sein. Die Saguntiner - Appian bzw. seine Vorlage hatte die irrige Vorstellung, sie seien Griechen - und die anderen Griechen sollten autonom und frei sein.

b) Klaus Zimmermann: Rom und Karthago, Darmstadt 2005

Regards, PTB