Turmodigi in 218 B.C.

Turmodigi — Spring 218 BC · A People of the High Meseta.

The Turmodigi — also called Turmogi — a small people of the high plateau in the upper Meseta, holding the cold tableland about the headwaters of the Ebro and the Pisuerga, the rolling grain-country of the Burgos uplands. They are a settled folk of fortified hill-towns and ploughed fields, neighbours of the great Vaccaei of the Douro plain to the west, of the Autrigones in the broken hill-country toward the northern sea, and of the warlike Celtiberi of the eastern highlands. Theirs is a minor place among the peoples of the interior — no kings, no famous host, no great confederacy — yet a real one: a community of toilers on a hard and high land, their chief seat the strong town of Segisamo, their wealth measured in grain and herds. In 218 BC, while Carthage and Rome ready themselves for war far to the south, the Turmodigi keep to their own plateau, independent and unconquered, as they have always been.

Far from the silver-country and the sea, on the cold roof of Iberia where the Ebro and the Pisuerga rise, the Turmodigi work their plateau. This is not a land of marching armies or famous cities but of small fortified towns set on rises above the ploughland, of granaries against the long winters, of cattle and horses on the open upland. They are a people of the middle sort among the interior nations — lesser than the broad Vaccaei whose common fields lie just westward, lesser than the iron Celtiberi of the eastern heights, but settled, rooted and their own. No outside power holds them. The war that Carthage and Rome now ready in the south, and the great raids that swept the Vaccaean towns two years past, have not reached this high corner of the Meseta. Here the year turns by the harvest, and the Turmodigi answer to no king but to their own town-councils and the elders of their kin.