Iacetani in 218 B.C.

Iacetani — Spring 218 BC · A Free People of the High Pyrenees.

The Iacetani — a hardy upland people of the central Pyrenean foothills and the upper Aragón, holding the mountain valleys and the passes that thread the high country from their native seat of Iaca. Theirs is a land of stone and snow-water: the cold rivers running down out of the heights, the alpine meadows where the flocks summer, the gorges that the trackways climb toward the watershed and the Gaulish slope beyond. They keep no king and bow to no crown — a free folk of clansmen and herders, ringed by kindred mountain peoples and by the Vascones to their west and the lowland confederacies toward the Iberus to the south. The ancient writers, looking up at these uplands from the plains, often muddle them with the Lacetani further east; but the Iacetani are their own people, the holders of the high central Pyrenees. In 218 BC, as the great armies march far to the south, they remain wholly independent, their valleys their own.

While Carthaginian and Roman hosts gather far to the south and along the lowland coast, the high country of the central Pyrenees keeps to its own ancient rhythm. The Iacetani hold the foothills and the upper valleys of the Aragón about Iaca, where the land begins to climb in earnest toward the watershed and the passes that lead over to the Gaulish side. It is poor, hard, defensible country — meagre for grain but rich in pasture, where wealth is counted in flocks and in the strength of clansmen who know every track and ravine. No king rules here and no foreign garrison stands; the Iacetani are answerable only to themselves, a free people of herders and hillmen. To the west lie the Vascones, to the east the Lacetani with whom outsiders confuse them, and below to the south the great river-peoples of the Iberus. The wars of the lowlands do not yet reach so high.