Let’s say you were one of those Celts living in a Castro in a stone house, maybe built by your grandfather and your great uncle a couple hundred years before the Common Era, say 2,500 years ago. You did not live in a vacuum of world understanding. 

 

As simple as you may have been, if you looked across the valley you could see your sister village where maybe your mother’s family came from, and you could see down to the river where once in a while a boat would appear and you knew travelers, traders, who ventured to other communities similar to your own and brought home tin, and copper, and iron and wine. And maybe, once in a while, other Celts would appear from farther north with stories and tails of distant peoples. 

 

And you certainly knew of the Lusitanians living to your south and other tribes of Celtiberians, Greeks and others. And too, one of the impressive boats of the Carthaginians would appear on the sea as they came from their great Mediterranean city, or their new city on the other side of the peninsula you may vaguely have felt you lived on, and they, the Carthaginians, brought their trade and their wine and traded for your salted fish and your gold, and with them, they brought stories of another city, a great city across the water and, from you, across the land, a city of fearful invention, Rome.

 

The Romans came in three waves. The Castro culture, stretching along the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay from the Douro River in Portugal to the western end of the Pyrenees Mountains in Spain, had evolved over a thousand years and the Castro people inhabited thousands of hilltop fortified villages near the sea and across inland hilltops. Their population may have reached 700,000 before the Romans. The first contact with the Romans came from the south. The Romans, having literally destroyed their arch enemy Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War, completely destroyed the city of Carthage in North Africa, tearing down every temple and physically leveling the city and killing and enslaving its inhabitants. Carthage was destroyed by Rome in 146 BCE. This gave the Romans carte blanche to the Iberian Peninsula and by 137 BCE, the Roman General, D. J. Brutus, entered the Castro lands and sought tribute from the Celtic tribes. Numerous battles ensued and while the Castro people were deeply affected by the Roman contact they remained relatively free even after other Roman explorations, one which included Caesar himself in 63 BCE a maritime expedition ensuring Roman control over the Atlantic trading routes. Trade and Roman influence increased dramatically during this period. In 27 BCE, Emperor Augustus decided to take full control of the region, of all that remained unconquered in Hispania. The resisting Castros of the north, the Cantabri and the Astures, engaged in the Cantabrian Wars against Augustus, and resisted till death this Roman occupation, a wartime force sometimes reaching 70,000 Roman legionnaires. 

More southern tribes, the Portugal tribes and those of south Galicia, went through a process of peaceful integration. The curator of the Museum at Castro at Monte Santa Trega (see photo), speaking of the Roman conquest of the site and other local Castros, said there was no archaeological evidence of any Castro walls, or houses, or buildings ever being destroyed by the Romans, and it is well known the Romans took local gods as their own and left local religions intact. 

 

The curator said, “The Romans were industrialists and engineers” and they had two main focuses: one, ensure the safety of their legionnaires, and two, the enrichment of Rome. The first thing after subjugation, either by battle or contract, the Romans would ask, “Where did you get the gold for that necklace,” or, “Where did this iron come from?” The Romans would immediately begin mining operations. They built roads for the transport of soldiers and goods and trade was expanded. The Castro people soon saw many benefits from the Roman ways and traded with them and worked for them. The Castro people did not have a currency, or money, and while working for the Romans were often paid in salt. A person “not worth his salt” was a real thing. The square buildings you witness in some of the Castro ruins were later additions to the village, learned from the Romans, and the use of tile roofing was also a Roman improvement. Olive tree cultivation was taught.

 

 Over the next 100 years, or so, with Pax Romania the rule of the land, the hilltop fortified cities were gradually abandoned, and people moved down to the valleys to be closer to the shipping, and the farming, and the Roman industrial sites. The Castro culture ended, not like Carthage in a single event, but over centuries. Yet even today, the modern Portuguese people love to have a little wall around their family compound, just as the family compounds in the Castros had, and every sidewalk in the entire country is a stone mosaic, like a Roman title mosaic floor, and, universally, the roofing is red ceramic tile.