Reading Appian’s Iberike lately, with his accounts of the Numantine war and Viriathus’ war, I was impressed with the ferocity and determination of Spanish resistance to Rome, and I was wondering what it would take to produce a unified, independent, Spain under native rule (so no Barcid or Sertorian régimes need apply) by, say, 50 BC.
Clearly some of the coastal Iberian cities, like Saguntum, were fully-developed Mediterranean city-states, literate in their own language; there was considerable wealth available, as the loot taken by successive Roman armies testifies; and the Spanish, whether Iberian, Celtiberian or Lusitanian, were tough and versatile soldiers, in great demand as mercenaries in foreign armies, and often prepared to resist conquest to the point of mass suicide rather than surrender.
So how and when could Spain, or even a substantial part of it, have been unified under local, rather than Punic or Roman, rule?
Clearly some of the coastal Iberian cities, like Saguntum, were fully-developed Mediterranean city-states, literate in their own language; there was considerable wealth available, as the loot taken by successive Roman armies testifies; and the Spanish, whether Iberian, Celtiberian or Lusitanian, were tough and versatile soldiers, in great demand as mercenaries in foreign armies, and often prepared to resist conquest to the point of mass suicide rather than surrender.
So how and when could Spain, or even a substantial part of it, have been unified under local, rather than Punic or Roman, rule?