GALICIA is the least known and the least written about of all the little kingdoms that go to the making of Spain. Her boundaries have been greatly reduced since the days when the Romans divided the Peninsula into five provinces and called one of them Galicia. In the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Sueves and the Vandals poured into Spain, they made Galicia their centre, and their kingdom extended into what is now the kingdom of Portugal, while Braga, now a Portuguese town, was for a long time the residential city of their kings. At the end of the seventh century King Witiza resided in Galicia, not as its king, but as the companion of his father in the kingdom of the Goths, whose seat was Toledo; it was as governor of Galicia that he resided at Tuy. In the days of the historian Mariana part of his palace was still to be seen there. His father died in 706, and he then became king of the Goths. The irruption of the Saracens in 713 again changed the aspect of the Peninsula, and the limits of Galicia were contracted; but Spanish geographers to this day call her a reino, or kingdom, and divide her into four little provinces—CoruÑa, Pontevedra, Orense, and Lugo. Like our Wales, Galicia once had kings of her own, and at a later date the title “king of Galicia” was given to the heir to the Spanish throne, just as that of “Prince of Asturias” is given now. It is an interesting fact that Moorish historians speak of that part of the Peninsula which retained the Christian faith during their occupation as “Galicia,” and of all the rest of the territory as “Spain.” Just as Novgorod proudly boasts of never having been conquered by the Tartars when the rest of Russia was subjected to their sway, so Galicia is proud to remember that she, at least, was never conquered by the Moors.

Galicia may justly be called the cradle of the Spanish nobility, for almost all Spain’s proudest families have their roots in Gallegan soil, their titles having been given to their ancestors as a reward for the heroic resistance they offered to the Moors.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Galicia seems to have been left out of count, and to have gradually sunk into oblivion. Even the Spaniards themselves know very little about her to-day. Yet in the Middle Ages her fame as a goal of pilgrims rivalled that of Palestine, not only throughout Spain, but throughout the length and breadth of Christendom; while earlier still, when she bravely resisted Julius CÆsar’s attempt at conquest, she won for herself no little glory.

The small amount of information relative to Galicia which is to be obtained from English and French books is distinctly unfavourable. We are told that her climate is damp and rainy, and that her inhabitants are dull, stubborn, and stupid; while her wonderful history, her exquisite scenery, and her fascinating architecture are barely alluded to, if not passed over in absolute silence. It is to Spanish writers that we must turn for information that is neither superficial nor unreliable.

There exists in the Spanish language a rich literature relating to Galicia, but a good history of this province has yet to be written. Aguiar began to write one in the thirties of the nineteenth century, but death frustrated the completion of his design, as it did those of several other competent men who had planned a similar task.[1] Aguiar explained in his first volume that he had been led to undertake the work by finding how unjustly and incorrectly Galicia had been treated by earlier writers, and how little she was known to the rest of Spain, in spite of her being one of the most important, one of the most beautiful, and one of the most cultured of the Spanish provinces. He further complained that no historians had ever taken the trouble to visit Galicia, except Ambrosio Morales,[2] whose sole object in doing so was to search for antiquities for the Escurial collection.

Galicia was the province that suffered most from the political unification of Spain; she was the one most sacrificed to the centralisation of political administration, partially, no doubt, in consequence of her position being the most distant and the most isolated one. There are many devoted Gallegans who compare their beloved territory to Finland, to Ireland and Hungary, and are never tired of saying that self-government alone could restore to her the prosperity that has forsaken her shores. They feel that as long as she is governed at a distance and by strangers she can never hope to raise her head.

Less troubled by invaders, less influenced by the Moors than the rest of Spain, Galicia at one time became the centre in which was propagated the purest of Spain’s lyric poetry; she constituted a neo-Gothic society the hearth on which were kindled the earliest flames of Peninsular civilisation;[3] hither came even kings to complete their education, and the language of Galicia—“O crown of fame!”—was the medium chosen by Spain’s greatest troubadours in which to express their poetic thoughts. But Galicia lost her political existence, and with it her culture was also extinguished.

But neither unification nor centralisation have the power to destroy national traditions, and Galicia is still, as one of her children has expressed it, “the land of glorious recollections.” The songs of her bards are still in the hearts of her people, and a passionate love for her mountains, vales, and rivers is perhaps the most marked of all the interesting traits to be found in the Gallegan character.

We were all taught at school, if not in the nursery, that Spain was conquered by the Romans, and later on by the Moors,—all Spain, except one little corner to the north-west,—and some of us have wondered how it came to pass that one little corner of the Peninsula should have succeeded in resisting so stoutly, not only Julius CÆsar, but the Moorish hosts who for eight long centuries held sway over the rest of the land. We have wondered what sort of people the Gallegans were, and whence came their martial genius, and, above all, their unconquerable love of liberty.

Every group of human beings, every town, every nation, leaves to posterity some record of its civil life and of its customs, according to the degree of civilisation in which it lived. These records come down to us preserved in rocks and stones, in hieroglyphics, in Runic characters and in Greek and Latin inscriptions, in lines upon parchment and in rustic dwellings. Such is the book in which our past is written, the book in which every generation has written a page. Some British ethnologists still think that the Basques are the oldest inhabitants of Spain, and that they once spread all over the Peninsula, but, as Barros Sivelo[4] and others have pointed out, that is impossible, for there is no trace of the Basques in the whole of Galicia. On the other hand, it has been proved many times and beyond all doubt that Celtic tribes inhabited that part of Spain for a considerable period. Borrow, after translating the Bible into Basque, strongly opposed the theory that this language was of Celtic origin. As this gifted student of languages spoke Erse, the native language of Ireland, fluently as well as that of the Basques, I think we may consider him a competent judge when he tells us that “perhaps in the whole of Europe it would be difficult to discover two languages which exhibit fewer points of mutual resemblance than the Basque and the Irish.”[5]

The oldest-known inhabitants of Spain were called Iberians. There are many theories about these people as to who they really were and whence they came, the most interesting and probable theory being that of Marcus Varro (who was about ten years older than Cicero), that conscientious historians believed that they were originally Scythian Iberians, and that they made their way from the neighbourhood of Armenia by way of northern Africa to Spain.[6] It is, at any rate, an interesting fact that Georgia also bore the name of Iberia in olden days, and that the hemispheric writing found among the Georgians of the present day is brought to our memory by the appearance of the wonderful hemispheric writing still to be distinctly traced upon the boulders of Galicia. Furthermore, we learn from the chronicle of Idatius, written in the fifth century, that the Roman Emperor Theodosius was born in the town of Cauca, in the province of Galicia.[7] No one can say with certainty where the town of Cauca was situated, but it is thought to have been somewhere between Braga and the river MiÑo. Now the word cauca in the language of the ancient Scythians meant “white,” and the name of the mountains of Georgia which divide Europe from Asia is “Caucasus,” said to have been given to them on account of their peaks being eternally “white” with snow.[8] So here we have at least one Asiatic Iberian name given to a town of Galicia, and we should in all probability find others were we to begin to search for them.[9]

The Iberians of the Caucasus are believed to have established themselves on the banks of the Caucasian rivers as far back as 3000 B.C. They multiplied so fast, we are told, that four hundred years after their arrival numbers of them wandered forth to seek a new home. They hurried along the northern coast of Africa and entered Spain by what was then the Isthmus of Hercules. But when the Celts came to Spain there were two other peoples already there besides the Iberians—the Ligurians and the Phoenicians. Jubainville assures us that the presence of Ligurians in Spain is attested by the presence of twenty-one names ending in asco, asca, ascon, and usco, and three of these names are found in Galicia. The Phoenicians never conquered Spain, they were only her masters as far as commerce was concerned. From the first to the last the Spanish Peninsula has never been completely conquered by any of its invaders except the Romans.

I have not had an opportunity of following the more recent anthropological studies of SeÑor Anton Ferrandez in connection with the subject of the first inhabitants of Spain, but in some of his lectures in the AthenÆum of Madrid he has propounded a theory that the two primitive races of Spain were that of the Cro-Magnon and that of the Celto-Slav. His conviction had been supported, moreover, by the recent discovery of prehistoric antiquities in Egypt analogous to those that have been found in Spain such as stone instruments, ornamental vases, and pictorial engravings upon rocks, representations of men and animals. In certain cases the signs discovered on Egyptian rocks have been found to be identical with those found in central Spain (Fuencaliente, Cueva di los Letreros, etc.); even the red colour with which some of them were engraved appeared to be the same. It is also anticipated that the recent discoveries made by Evans in the island of Crete may throw more light upon this problem.[10] I saw recently in the ArchÆological Museum at Madrid some cases of glazed terra-cotta fragments from the neighbourhood of Cordova exactly similar to those that have been found at Arezzo in Italy, and which are considered to be Etruscan; in another room I found some remarkable stone figures of women with peaked head-dresses, said to be Phoenician antiquities, but which bore an unmistakable resemblance to the stone babus found on the plains of Russia, and attributed to the Huns.[11] The Spanish ones were, it is true, very much smaller, but the attitude and the position of the hands was identical. Another recent discovery is that of fragments of pottery in various parts of Spain bearing the zigzag ornamentation—supposed to represent the running of water—which is so often found upon Egyptian pottery.[12] SeÑor Melida considers this a fresh testimony to the Libian origin of the primitive inhabitants of Spain.

So far no comparative study has been made of the barrows and tumuli of Spain, but it has at least been ascertained that there are none in the east and only a few in the centre, while in the north, west, and south they are frequently to be met with—a fact that has been supposed by some to indicate the isolation in which their constructors lived. There are two distinct kinds of dolmen: some are square in form, notably those in CataluÑa and Andalusia; others are circular, with walls arranged in a conical form—the latter being the type most frequent in Galicia and in Portugal.

In Galicia, barrows, locally known as castros, are very numerous. On one occasion four were pointed out to me during an hour’s drive. As SeÑor Villa Amil has remarked, they are too well fortified to be temples, and too numerous and too near together to be war camps. During the Middle Ages the Gallegans used them as forts; and earlier still, when defending themselves against the Romans, they made them their chief strongholds. These castros are frequently mentioned in the Historia Compostelana, and always as fortresses. SeÑor Villa Amil concludes that they must have originally been, at one and the same time, both fortresses and towns. Strabo’s statement that the Celts lived in little villages close to one another supports this view. Some authors, taking the accessary for the principal, have called these castros, mamoas, or modorras; but mamoas are, in fact, what archÆologists have agreed to call tumuli. In the old Latin documents of Galicia these last are called mamulas and mamonas. The most important articles found in these mamoas are the so-called torcs, or torques, of massive gold, with coarse workmanship and very little ornamentation. SeÑor Villa Amil explains the paucity of iron instruments by the climatic conditions of the country, which he thinks lead to the total decomposition of iron weapons. Handmills of two pieces of granite have been found, very similar to those discovered in French caves. Though he has found many fragments of pottery, SeÑor Villa Amil has never come across a whole vase, and he takes this as a proof that the people who formed these tumuli could not have used funeral urns; the fragments are in almost every case of a material which gives them an undoubtedly historic character—they are of clay mixed with sand and scattered over with mica. Some iron instruments and some bronze jewellery, more finely worked than the gold torques, were found with these. Our friend concludes that the tumuli must be prehistoric citadels which continued to be used as fastnesses right down to the end of the Middle Ages. Melida states that on all the mamoas of Galicia there have been found indications of the cremation of the dead. SeÑor Macineira has prepared a map of the castros in the neighbourhood of Ortigueira (Galicia), showing which of them he considers to be of ante-Roman and which of Roman origin,[13] those of Roman origin being similar to our “CÆsar’s camps.” Many of them served as defences of the coast. They are oblong or circular in shape with double parapets, often showing that much thought must have been expended upon their construction. It is supposed that the ante-Roman ones were used as the residences of tribal chiefs as well as for sepulchres, while Druidical stones resembling those of Stonehenge are to be seen in several wild and mountainous spots, and huge heaps of stones like the cairns of Scotland and Ireland also testify to Celtic customs. Galicia certainly rivals the British Isles in her megalithic remains; she can also boast of “rocking” boulders[14] such as those that were formerly used as tests of female virtue in Brittany. That Celts inhabited Galicia at a very early period in the history of the human race is certain, but they were not her earliest inhabitants. Barros Sivelo was convinced, after years of study, that the earliest inhabitants of Galicia were neither Celts nor Iberians. To discover who were the forerunners of these two races will be the business of archÆology, and in archÆology the words “prehistoric” and “historic” cease to have any value, for every object that comes down to us from the earliest times is itself a historical document, which, if properly interpreted, will help to throw light upon the past.

Jubainville,[15] who has devoted years of patient study to the ancient history of the Celtic race, tells us in his latest work that the Britons reached Great Britain from the continent in the eleventh century B.C., and that their language is represented to-day by two of their living daughters, the Welsh-speaking people in Britain and the Breton-speaking people of Brittany in France. He also believes that the Celts penetrated into Spain from France before Druidism had reached Gaul from its birthplace, Britain. When the Celts and the Iberians had, in certain parts of Spain, amalgamated into one race, they began to be called Celtiberians; but in the corner of Spain with which we have now to do a small group of Celtic tribes kept themselves quite distinct from the Iberians. The Celts of Galicia were still Celts pure and simple when the Romans, under Decimus Brutus, conquered that province in B.C. 136, and it is from them that the present inhabitants of Galicia have inherited their Celtic place-names, their Celtic bagpipe, their Celtic dances, their Celtic temperament, and many other things Celtic which they share with their neighbours of Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany to-day.

Celtic Spain is thought to have embraced part of Lusitania (now the north of Portugal), the whole of the territory now called Galicia, Asturias, and all the other northern kingdoms of the Peninsula. Paul Orosius, a local writer of the fourth century, is one of our authorities here, but Manuel de la Huerta y Vega was somewhat doubtful on this point.

With regard to the derivation of the word “Galicia” there are still many contested opinions. Florez[16] tells us that the ancients spelt it both with a C and a G. Martial speaks of “Oceano Callaico,” and Brutus was called “Callaicus” when he returned to Rome for his “triumph.” St. Isidore of Seville derived the word “Galicia” from ?a?a, the Greek word for milk, thinking that the inhabitants had received the name on account of their milky-white complexions. Julius CÆsar begins his Commentaries by saying that they called themselves Celts in their own language[17] and that the Roman equivalent was “Galli,” but Florez argues that as the Celts had relations with the Greeks long before they had any with Rome, we must take the name Galatos to be much more ancient than that of Galli, the former having been used by the Greeks, and the latter by the Romans. St. Isidore says that the Gallegos were also called Galos, and that both these names originated in the fairness of their complexions; but again Florez demurs, assuring us that he has never seen in any document the name of Gallos applied to the Gallegans. “We know,” he adds, “that the Celts entered Galicia, but the territory they occupied was called ‘celtico,’ not ‘galico’ nor ‘galiciense.’” Mela and others thought, on the other hand, that the term Calaicos was derived from the name of a town called Cale. Florez says that it is certain, from the writings of Sallust, that there once existed a town of the name of Cale to the north of the Duero, and that at the mouth of that river there was a Portus Cale, from which the name of Portugal is derived; but he concludes his chapter on this subject by declaring that it is impossible to say what is the true derivation of the word “Galicia.”

The question as to how and whence the Celts entered Galicia has become of late years a thorny subject to Spanish students of Gallegan history, and a foreigner who has followed their discussions can hardly approach it without feeling that he is treading upon dangerous ground. I shall avoid taking it upon myself to decide which of the many theories put before the Spanish public is nearest to the truth. There are some who think that Galicia, Ireland, and America were once connected by land, and there are many who maintain that in prehistoric times there must have been a close maritime intercourse between Ireland and Galicia.

Both the Scotch and the Irish have traditions to the effect that the native races of Scotland and Ireland are descended from Spaniards. Curiously enough, I came across a proof of the freshness of such traditions in the minds of the Irish of my own day just as I was starting for Galicia in 1907. An Irish maid who was assisting me to prepare for my departure, on hearing that Spain was the destination of my journey, remarked, “That is the country my people came from. All the Irish came from Spain a long time ago.” “Are you quite sure?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied, “quite sure. Everybody in Ireland knows that; even the poor people know it.”

Some Spanish writers believe that the Celts, passing from Galicia to Ireland, crossed thence to England. “But if it is true,” says Aguiar, “that the English Celts came to France from England, how comes it that Julius CÆsar tells us that the Galli went to England to be instructed in the sciences?” Others are of the opinion that the earliest inhabitants of Galicia entered Spain at a much earlier date than that which the Gauls settled in France—Herodotus having written about Spanish Celts, but not about French ones. They believe that the Spanish Celts are a branch of the Cimmerians described by Herodotus as dwelling in the Crimea,[18] who disappeared completely from the neighbourhood of the Black Sea, and were thought to have settled in Wales under the name of Cimbri.[19] There have come down to our own times many geographical names, not only in Britain, but also in Galicia, containing the roots Cam, Camb, Cambr, Cim, and Cimbr.

The earliest documentary information about Galicia comes to us from the Romans, from the writings of Julius CÆsar, Strabo, and Pliny the Younger, from Justin, Silicus Italicus, and Asclepiades. The last-named writer speaks of Greek colonies in Galicia and Lusitania, but many Spanish writers have discredited their existence, and Barros Sivelo affirms that there is not a single monument in Galicia testifying to the Greeks having settled there. Recent writers have devoted much time to the extraction of imaginary Greek roots from words in daily use among the Gallegan peasantry, but, as far as I can judge, too much free play has been allowed to their imagination; and when one remembers how distinct are the traces left by Greek colonies in other parts of the world, one naturally looks for more substantial proof than that which is afforded by a page or two of strained philological comparisons.[20] The tradition has, however, been handed down to us that several Gallegan towns, notably those of Tuy and Pontevedra, owe their origin to Greek settlers, and certain Greek customs are said to be still extant there.

There were Phoenician colonies in Galicia in the twentieth century B.C. In Pontevedra I came across an interesting little Spanish book with the title, “A Critical Dissertation, undertaken to prove that William Cambden was wrong in stating that the islands to which the Phoenicians came for tin were the Scilly Islands, and that these islands (known to the ancients as the Cassiterides) are those which are situated on the coast of the kingdom of Galicia”[21] (opposite Vigo harbour). Ptolemy wrote of them as being ten in number, and all inhabited, except one, by a people who clad themselves in long black tunics with a girdle round their waist, who walked staff in hand and wore beards like goats.

Pliny, quoting Herodotus, owned that he knew nothing about the islands in question, “Nec Cassiterides novi insulas, unde ad nos venit stanum.” The first writer to mention these islands is Herodotus. Himilcon’s expedition is supposed by the Spanish historian Velazquez to have taken place in 400 B.C. Cornide quotes many Spanish writers who believed the Cassiterides to have been situated on the coast of Galicia; he then complains that Cambden only quoted that part of Diodorus Siculus which was favourable to his theory, and passed over in silence the words “supra Lusitanorum provinciam multum stannei est metalli in insulis videlicet occidentalibus Oceano Iberico adjacentibus quas idcirco Cassiterides nuncuparit.” How could this passage possibly refer to the Scilly Islands? Then, too, if the Scilly Islands were once so rich in tin, it surely is strange that they now show traces of nothing but granite and quartz. But what islands are these on the Gallegan coast that may once have contained so rich a supply of tin? Only a group of minute ones opposite the harbour of Vigo. “Perhaps,” say some, “the group contained larger islands once; they may have been swallowed by the sea.”

The Phoenicians had long held sway over the empire of the sea, and to this they owed their immense wealth. In the Bible they are alluded to as merchant princes. They visited India for their own private interests, and fetched thence gold, precious stones, valuable woods, ivory, monkeys, and peacocks’ feathers. Herodotus tells us that to satisfy the curiosity of Necho, king of Egypt, they sailed round Africa, starting from the Red Sea and taking three years for the voyage. When they explored the coast of Africa they brought away as trophies the skins of some Ethiopian women who had refused to be taken captive alive. The Carthaginians and the Phoenicians were both from the same Semitic stock as the Hebrews. Aguiar, quoting Pliny, says that Midacritus made a voyage to the Cassiterides in 1600 B.C., thus initiating commerce in the famed tin of these islands, and he goes on to say that without doubt the Cassiterides, if they were not on the coast of Galicia, were the British Isles. The Phoenicians even visited Ireland and brought information to the Romans about far-off Thule. If these navigators reached Britain, where vestiges of their language still remain, they must of a certainty have been acquainted with the coast of Galicia, whose mountains contained tin of so fine a quality that where English tin contained six parts per hundred of lead these contained thirty. According to Jubainville, it was from the Phoenicians that the Celts (after their establishment in Gaul) heard of the rich mines in Spain which induced them to conquer that country. The power of the Phoenicians was already in its decline when they came under the sway of Persia about the year 537 B.C. Jubainville believes that the word Cassiterides is derived through the Greek ?ass?te???, from a Celtic root cassi, meaning agreeable—whence also he derives the Irish word caise, meaning esteem, love. He believes that the Celts from what is now Hesse-Darmstadt, being pleased with Great Britain, gave it that name, and he agrees with Reinach’s suggestion that tin came to be called ?ass?te???, because it was found in the country known by that name.[22]

Galicia has traditions reaching back into the remotest antiquity. The name of the famous tower of Hercules, at the entrance to the harbour of CoruÑa, proves the presence of Phoenicians in Galicia. It was they who named the Straits of Gibraltar the Pillars of Hercules, and they who gave the name of Hercules to a tower they erected in the harbour of Cadiz.

Local archÆologists are, as we have seen, convinced that some other race dwelt in Galicia before it was invaded by the Celts, but they tell us that, so far, no very distinct vestige of such people has been traced, there is nothing sufficiently definite to prove their identity.

The fact that no iron implements from their time had been discovered till quite recently, leads to the conclusion that they were in absolute ignorance of the use of metals, but I speak with hesitation on this point, awaiting the final decision of SeÑor Villa Amil at the conclusion of the interesting studies he is engaged in with respect to the iron instruments he has himself excavated in Galicia. Barros Sivelo, quoting Italicus, says that the ancient Celts wore their hair flowing down their backs, and semicircular caps upon their heads, while their women wore high peaked head-dresses covered with black veils which drooped over their foreheads. These people had a strange custom of exposing their sick upon the public highways in order that those who had suffered from the same malady might recommend a cure.

Florez says that Galicia sent forth the flower of her youth to fight under Hannibal, and he quotes Silius Italicus, “Misit dives Gallaecia pubes,” etc.

For twenty-four years Rome and Carthage had fought over Sicily. After the Sicilian defeat the Carthaginians, who were (like the Phoenicians) of Semitic extraction, landed at Cadiz with the flower of their army that they might gain in Spain what they had lost in Sicily.[23] Their leader was Hamilcar Barca, whose ambition it was to conquer Italy as well as Spain. Carthage had exploited Spain for four hundred years when, after the second Punic war, Rome took up the cause of the inhabitants of Spain against their Carthaginian oppressors, and Hamilcar found a worthy opponent in Scipio Africanus. The people of Spain, after fighting on the side of Scipio, were also crushed by the Romans in their turn, but they cost Rome every year an army and a consul. The cruelty of Lucullus and Galba made the name of Rome hateful to Spanish ears. Spanish bandits continually attacked the Roman legions; Rome feared insurrection more and more, and at last was not ashamed to buy with gold the life of her enemy.

When Quintus Fabius had subjugated the greater part of Lusitania,[24] now northern Portugal, the tribes dwelling in Galicia came down against the Roman cities, continually raiding them in flying columns, and fleeing to the mountains for refuge when the Romans gave them chase. Brutus, when he crossed the river Limia, was the leader of an expedition sent out to follow and punish them. In all these skirmishes the Gallegan women played a prominent part, taking the field beside their husbands and brothers, and employing their weapons with the greatest courage and determination. They received their wounds with silent fortitude, and no cry of pain ever escaped their lips, even when the wounds which laid them low were mortal. Both sexes preferred death to loss of liberty, and when taken prisoners they put themselves and their little ones to death that they might not fall into slavery.

In the year 131 B.C., Brutus, entering Rome in triumph, received the name of Calaicus[25] in honour of his successes in Galicia. Nevertheless, he had not succeeded in penetrating into Galicia farther than the river MiÑo. Valerius Maximus tells us that Brutus found one city in Lusitania—Cinania or Cinninia—so hard to conquer that at last he sent legates to offer them money, to which the citizens replied that their ancestors had left them iron in order that they might defend their city, not gold with which to buy liberty from an avaricious emperor—“A speech,” adds Valerius Maximus, “that would have sounded better in the mouths of the Romans than in their ears.” The name of this city is not mentioned by other writers, and no trace of its site has remained.

The inscription relating to the Triumph of Brutus shows that Galicia as well as Lusitania belonged to “Further Spain.” But in the time of Julius CÆsar historians spoke of that general’s having made Galicia and Lusitania equally the goal of his campaigns. “Further Spain” was the theatre of his battles from first to last. It was there that he set the seal to his triumph over the sons of Pompey, and there that he did the deeds of prowess that won him, first the title of QuÆstor, and at length that of PrÆtor of Spain. It was when he received the last-mentioned title that his head began to be filled with the idea of a universal empire, and that he added ten Cohorts to the twenty he had already.[26] For one of his expeditions in these parts he caused ships full of troops to be sent round the coast from Cadiz. Doubling Cape Finisterre, he arrived with his fleet before CoruÑa (Brigantium), and terrifying the nations who had never before set eyes on such an Armada. Galicia was peopled at that time with many different tribes and races.

Strabo, writing in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, stated that between the Tagus and Cape Finisterre there dwelt as many as thirty different races, most of whom bore such strange names that the Greeks and Romans found them difficult to pronounce, and Mela remarks that some of these names could not be fitted to the Roman tongue. Plutarch tells us that Julius CÆsar then conquered not only the Lusitanians and Gallegans, but also many peoples till then unheard of at Rome. It was then that, proud of their general, his soldiers for the first time proclaimed CÆsar Imperator (they being intoxicated with the booty with which he had enriched them). It was in Galicia that Julius CÆsar first dreamed of becoming an emperor.

When the Gallegans fled for refuge to their mountains, these seemed inaccessible to the Roman legions. In fact, so much importance did Augustus attach to their complete subjugation, that, rather than trust the task to one of his generals, he prepared to command in person; but in spite of all his efforts he was so continually repulsed that he fell ill from sheer worry, and was obliged to retire from the field and leave his generals in command. At last the Romans gained the upper hand, and Augustus made Galicia into a province. It was then that Galicia was separated from Lusitania by the river Duero. She was not separated from Taraconensis till the reign of Constantine the Great, in the year 330.

The Emperor Theodocius, we have already observed, was born in Galicia in 346. It is thought that his son Arcadius was also born there. The mother of the latter, Flacila, was herself a native of Galicia; the poet Claudia praises her beauty in a poem in honour of the marriage of the Emperor Honorius. It was in the reign of Theodocius that the heresy of Priscillian spread throughout Galicia.[27]

From the year 411 the northern barbarians who had invaded Spain, the Sueves and Vandals, began to hold sway over Galicia. As these two tribes could not manage to agree, it ended in the Vandals vacating that territory and passing southward to BÆtica: thence they passed over to Africa in the year 429. The Sueves, who were one of the bravest of the German tribes, then spread all over Galicia, the Gallegans defending themselves in the mountain fastnesses with great bravery, and often forcing the Sueves to make treaties with them.

Very little is known about the doings of the Sueves during the century and a half of their power, before they were finally overthrown by Theodoricus, king of the Goths. But certain recent Spanish historians have filled in that part of their narrative with original legends, and made as much as they could out of the historical fact of the conversion of the king of the Sueves to Christianity through the instrumentality of St. Martin Dumiensis. In the year 585, Leovigild, king of the Goths, finally destroyed the kingdom of the Sueves, and made himself lord of all the territory within and around Galicia which had come under their rule. Although St. Martin was the means of the conversion of King Miro, his people were not brought into the fold of the Church till the reign of Recaredo, son of Leovigild.

Florez impresses upon his readers that the kingdom of Galicia is the most ancient of all the Spanish kingdoms; that not only is it older than that of the Goths, but also than that of the Franks in Gaul, seeing that it existed in the year 411, and never from that date did it cease to be a kingdom. So wide did its boundaries become at one time, that Archbishop Rodrigo spoke, in his History of the Barbarians, of the king of the Sueves as practically the sole monarch in Spain. Leovigild did not destroy it, he incorporated it into the kingdom of the Goths. “Therefore,” says Florez, “the Spanish monarchy clearly dates from the year 411, when the Sueves established the kingdom of Galicia, that being quite independent of the Roman Empire.”