Edetani in 218 B.C.

Edetani — Spring 218 BC · An Iberian People North of the Sucro.

The Edetani — also called Sedetani — an Iberian people of the eastern interior, holding the broad country north of the river Sucro about their chief town of Edeta. Theirs is a wealthy Iberian land of fortified hill-towns, painted pottery and rich hilltop sanctuaries, set between the Celtiberian highlands inland and the warm coastal plain that runs down toward New Carthage. In 218 BC they are their own masters, one of the patchwork of independent Iberian peoples of the east — but their southern march lies hard by Saguntum, the Greek-Iberian city that Hannibal stormed only last year, and the smoke of that siege still hangs over the road north. They are a people living in the shadow of the war that is about to consume the whole Mediterranean.

The Edetani hold the eastern interior between the Celtiberian uplands and the coastal plain, the country round about the river Sucro that marks their southern bound. Theirs is one of the richest of the Iberian lands: walled oppida crowning defensible ridges, silver and metal worked from the hill-deposits, and great sanctuaries set high above the valleys, where votive bronzes are offered and the fine painted pottery of the Iberian potters is famed. They keep no king after the Greek fashion but the loose chieftainship of an Iberian people, their strength resting in the fortified towns and the warrior-bands they raise. In 218 BC they are still independent — but they live on the edge of catastrophe. Just to their south stands Saguntum, the city Hannibal besieged and sacked in 219 BC, the act that kindled the second war between Carthage and Rome. The Carthaginian power has spread steadily up the seaboard toward their borders; the road that armies will march now runs through their country.