Celtiberi in 218 B.C.

Celtiberi — Spring 218 BC · The Free Peoples of the Highlands.

The Celtiberians — the warlike Celtic-Iberian peoples of the central highlands, where the Celts who long ago crossed the Pyrenees mingled with the native Iberians of the tableland. They are no single realm but a confederation of free peoples: the Arevaci of the upper Durius, mightiest of them all; the Belli and the Titti about the Iberus headwaters; the Lusones of the eastern hills; and the Pelendones of the cold northern uplands. They dwell in strong hillfort towns set on crags above the rivers — Uxama, Termes, Valeria, Turiaso — and they live by their herds, their iron and their swords. The Celtiberian blade, double-edged and of peerless temper, is the finest weapon of the West, and the Celtiberian warrior the most sought-after mercenary in it: bound to no king, the highland peoples hire out their spears to whoever will pay, and in 218 BC their sworn bands serve in the armies of Carthage and her enemies alike. They answer to no foreign master.

While Carthage and Rome reach for one another across the sea, the high cold heart of Iberia keeps its own counsel. The Celtiberians are masters of the tableland that no power has yet conquered — the broken country of crag and gorge and bitter winter between the Durius and the Iberus, where each people holds its hillforts and its grazing and bows to no outside crown. They are reckoned the bravest of the Iberians, and the most coveted as soldiers: their warriors take service for hire across the western world, fighting in the pay of Carthage on her Italian march even as kinsmen of theirs fight against her. The spring of their fame is iron — the sword they forge by burying the blade in the earth until the weak metal has rusted away and only the hard core remains, then beating it anew into a weapon that no helmet or shield can withstand. To this they wed a savage code of loyalty: the soldurii, the sworn companions who pledge their very lives to a chief and will not outlive him. They are free, fierce, and hospitable to the stranger who comes in peace — and a terror to the army that comes in war.