Astures in 218 B.C.

Astures — Spring 218 BC · The Free Mountain Peoples of the North-West.

The Astures — a hardy weave of kindred mountain peoples in the high north-western corner of Iberia, where cold rivers run down off the snow-streaked sierras into the upper Durius plains. They are no single nation but a confederacy of many sub-peoples — the Brigaecini of the meseta edge, the Amaci, the Luggoni of the deep valleys, the Orniaci of the broken hill-country, the Gigurri of the river-crossing, and others past counting — each living in its own clustered hillforts, the castros, that crown every defensible spur. Theirs is a stock-raising, raiding upland world of cattle and the prized asturcón horses, of gold-bearing rivers panned in the gravels, of clan and warband rather than crown. In 218 BC, as Hannibal storms out of the south and Rome readies its legions far away, the Astures sit beyond them both — unconquered in their mountains, owing tribute to no foreign power.

While Carthage drives its silver-funded armies up out of the south and Rome marshals its strength across the sea, the high north-western corner of Iberia keeps to its own ancient rhythm, untouched by either power. The Astures hold a country that no army has yet broken: a tangle of sierras, gorges and gold-running rivers where the people live not under kings but in scattered kindreds, each behind the ditch and rampart of its own hilltop castro. They raise cattle on the thin upland pastures, breed the swift asturcón horses that other peoples covet, wash gold from the river-gravels, and live as much by the raid and the warband as by the herd. No tribute road runs up into these mountains, and no foreign garrison sits among them. The wars of Hannibal and the silver of the south are matters of rumour here — the affairs of distant lowland peoples — to a society that has kept its independence in the rock for as long as memory runs.