Another author, Cornelius Nepos,Cornelius Nepos, De Viris Illustribus, 47. claims that the Cantabrian tribes first submitted to Rome upon Cato the Elder’s campaigns in Celtiberia in 195 BC.Though most modern historians have cast serious doubts upon the veracity of this particular episode, since other sources (Livy, Appian, Polybius) don’t mention it at all. In any case, such was their reputation that when a battered Roman army under consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus was besieging Numantia in 137 BC, the rumor of the approach of a large combined Cantabri-Vaccaei relief force was enough to cause the rout of 20,000 panic-stricken Roman legionaries, forcing Mancinus to surrender under humiliating peace terms.Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 5, 4.Appian, Romaika, 83. Santander. By the 1st century BC they comprised eleven or so tribes—, , Camarici or Tamarici, Concani, Coniaci or Conisci, Morecani, Noegi, Orgenomesci, Plentuisii, Salaeni, Vadinienses, and Vellici or Velliques—gathered into a tribal confederacy with the town of Aracillum (Castro de Espina del Gallego, Sierra del Escudo – Cantabria), located at the strategic Besaya river valley, as their political seat.
|
|