Vaccaei in 218 B.C.

Vaccaei — Spring 218 BC · The Grain-People of the Meseta.

The Vaccaei — the great agrarian people of the high Duero (Durius) plateau, the bread-basket of the Iberian interior. Theirs is no monarchy but a league of large, strongly walled towns set amid the broadest grain-lands of the Meseta, where the wide cereal fields are sown and harvested by a custom no other people keeps: each year the Vaccaei apportion the farmland among themselves, work it, and gather the crop into a common store to be shared out in equal portions — and any who keeps back a share for himself is put to death. From this ordered husbandry comes a wealth in grain that feeds neighbours and tempts armies. In 220 BC, two summers past, Hannibal marched up onto their plateau and stormed their towns of Helmantica and Arbucala before turning south to crush the Carpetani at the Tagus. He carried off their grain and their plunder, but he did not stay: in 218 BC the Vaccaei remain unsubdued, an independent people of the interior behind the line of Carthaginian power on the eastern sea.

While Carthage and Rome gather for war on the eastern seaboard, the Vaccaei keep to the rhythm of the plough on the high inland plateau. They are the richest grain-people of Iberia, and the most singular: alone among the peoples of the peninsula they hold their farmland in common, apportioning it afresh each year, working it together, and dividing the harvest in equal shares from a common store — a custom they guard with death for any who hoards. Their wealth is reckoned not in mines or in ships but in granaries, and their towns — Pallantia, Intercatia, Cauca, Pintia — are great walled places ringed by ditch and earthwork, each able to put thousands of foot and horse into the field. Two years ago that wealth drew Hannibal up onto the Meseta; he stormed Helmantica and Arbucala and bore off their plunder, then went south again. He did not conquer them. In 218 BC the Vaccaei stand free on their plateau — raided, lightened of a year’s grain, but unbroken — while the war that will one day reach even them kindles far to the east, between Carthage and Rome.