Ancient Portugal
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Ancient Portugal
This article covers the history of ancient Portugal, the period between Prehistoric Iberia and County of Portugal. Pre-Roman people Numerous Pre-Roman people of the Iberian Peninsula inhabited the territory now known as Portugal. Roman rule (3rd century BC – 4th century AD) The first Roman invasion of the Iberian Peninsula occurred in 219 BC. Within 200 years, almost the entire peninsula had been annexed to the Roman Republic, starting the Romanization of Hispania. The Carthaginians, Rome's adversary in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies. The Roman conquest of what is now part of modern-day Portugal took several decades: it started from the south, where the Romans found friendly natives, the Conii. It suffered a severe setback in 150 BC, when a rebellion began in the north. The Lusitanians and other native tribes, under the leadership of Viriathus, wrested control of all of the Portuguese land. Rome sent numerous legions and its best generals to L ...
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Prehistoric Iberia
The prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula begins with the arrival of the first hominins 1.2 million years ago and ends with the Punic Wars, when the territory enters the domains of written history. In this long period, some of its most significant landmarks were to host the last stand of the Neanderthal people, to develop some of the most impressive Paleolithic art, alongside Southern France, to be the seat of the earliest civilizations of Western Europe and finally to become a most desired colonial objective due to its strategic position and its many mineral riches. Lower and Middle Paleolithic The first inhabitation by humans of the Iberian Peninsula dates from the Paleolithic. Early hominin remains have been discovered at a number of sites on the peninsula. Significant evidence of an extended occupation of Iberia by Neanderthal man has also been discovered. Homo sapiens first entered Iberia towards the end of the Paleolithic. For a time Neanderthals and modern humans coexi ...
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Hydatius
Hydatius, also spelled Idacius (c. 400 – c. 469) was a late Western Roman writer and clergyman. The bishop of Aquae Flaviae in the Roman province of Gallaecia (almost certainly the modern Chaves, Portugal, in the modern district of Vila Real), he was the author of a chronicle of his own times that provides us with our best evidence for the history of Hispania in the 5th century. Biography Hydatius was born around the year 400 in the environs of Civitas Lemica, a Roman town near modern Xinzo de Limia in the Spanish Galician province of Ourense. As a young boy, he travelled as a pilgrim to the Holy Land with his mother, where he met Jerome in his hermitage at Bethlehem.Brown, Peter. ''The Rise of Western Christendom''. (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2003) p. 99 About the year 417 he joined the clergy, and in 427 was consecrated bishop probably of Chaves (the Roman ''Aquae Flaviae'') in Gallaecia. As bishop he had to come to terms with the presence of non-Roman power ...
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Bracara
Braga ( , ; cel-x-proto, Bracara) is a city and a municipality, capital of the northwestern Portuguese district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality has a resident population of 193,333 inhabitants (in 2021), representing the seventh largest municipality in Portugal (by population). Its area is 183.40 km2. Its agglomerated urban area extends from the Cávado River to the Este River. It is the most populated urban area in Portugal outside Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Areas. It is host to the oldest Portuguese archdiocese, the Archdiocese of Braga of the Catholic Church and it is the seat of the Primacy of the Spains. During the Roman Empire, then known as Bracara Augusta, the settlement was the capital of the province of Gallaecia and later of the Kingdom of the Suebi that was one of the first to separate from the Roman Empire. Inside of the city there is also a castle tower that can be visited. Nowadays, Braga is a major hub for i ...
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Visigoths
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is known as the Migration Period. The Visigoths emerged from earlier Gothic groups, including a large group of Thervingi, who had moved into the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had played a major role in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Relations between the Romans and the Visigoths varied, with the two groups making treaties when convenient, and warring with one another when not. Under their first leader, Alaric I, the Visigoths invaded Italy and sacked Rome in August 410. Afterwards, they began settling down, first in southern Gaul and eventually in Hispania, where they founded the Visigothic Kingdom and maintained a presence from the 5th to the 8th centuries AD. The Visigoths first settled in southern Gaul as ...
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Marcomanni
The Marcomanni were a Germanic people * * * that established a powerful kingdom north of the Danube, somewhere near modern Bohemia, during the peak of power of the nearby Roman Empire. According to Tacitus and Strabo, they were Suebian. Origin It is believed their name may derive from Proto-Germanic ''*markō'' "border, boundary" (hence the English ''march'' or ''mark'', meaning "frontier, border", as in the Welsh marches and the kingdom of Mercia) and ''*mann-'' (pl. ''*manniz'') "man", ''*Markōmanniz'', which would have been rendered in Latinised form as ''Marcomanni''. The Marcomanni first appear in historical records as confederates of the Suebi of Ariovistus fighting against Julius Caesar in Gaul (now France) after they had crossed the Rhine from what is now southern Germany. The exact position of their lands at the time is not known. The fact that their name existed before the Romans had territory near the Danube or Rhine raises the question of which border they lived ...
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Quadi
The Quadi were a Germanic * * * people who lived approximately in the area of modern Moravia in the time of the Roman Empire. The only surviving contemporary reports about the Germanic tribe are those of the Romans, whose empire had its border on the River Danube just to the south of the Quadi. They associated the Quadi with their neighbours the Marcomanni, and described both groups as having entered the region after the Celtic Boii had left it deserted. The Quadi may later have contributed to the "Suebian" group who crossed the Rhine with the Vandals and Alans in the 406 Crossing of the Rhine, and later founded a kingdom in northwestern Iberia. 1st centuries BC/AD In the first century BC, according to Roman written sources, the more numerous Marcomanni, whose name probably means "men of the borderlands", moved themselves from settlements elsewhere into a hilly area in the Hercynian forest known as ''Baiohaemum'', which is generally considered to have been the same as, or ne ...
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Alans
The Alans (Latin: ''Alani'') were an ancient and medieval Iranian nomadic pastoral people of the North Caucasus – generally regarded as part of the Sarmatians, and possibly related to the Massagetae. Modern historians have connected the Alans with the Central Asian Yancai of Chinese sources and with the Aorsi of Roman sources. Having migrated westwards and becoming dominant among the Sarmatians on the Pontic–Caspian steppe, the Alans are mentioned by Roman sources in the . At that time they had settled the region north of the Black Sea and frequently raided the Parthian Empire and the Caucasian provinces of the Roman Empire. From the Goths broke their power on the Pontic Steppe. Upon the Hunnic defeat of the Goths on the Pontic Steppe around , many of the Alans migrated westwards along with various Germanic tribes. They crossed the Rhine in 406CE along with the Vandals and Suebi, settling in Orléans and Valence. Around 409 CE they joined the Vandals and Suebi in cro ...
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Sarmatians
The Sarmatians (; grc, Σαρμαται, Sarmatai; Latin: ) were a large confederation of Ancient Iranian peoples, ancient Eastern Iranian languages, Eastern Iranian peoples, Iranian Eurasian nomads, equestrian nomadic peoples of classical antiquity who dominated the Pontic–Caspian steppe, Pontic steppe from about the 3rd century BC to the 4th century AD. Originating in the central parts of the Eurasian Steppe, the Sarmatians were part of the wider Scythian cultures. They started migrating westward around the fourth and third centuries BC, coming to dominate the closely related Scythians by 200 BC. At their greatest reported extent, around 100 BC, these tribes ranged from the Vistula River to the mouth of the Danube and eastward to the Volga, bordering the shores of the Black Sea, Black and Caspian Sea, Caspian seas as well as the Caucasus to the south. In the first century AD, the Sarmatians began encroaching upon the Roman Empire in alliance with Germanic peoples, Germanic ...
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Hasdingi
The Hasdingi were one of the Vandal peoples of the Roman era. The Vandals were Germanic peoples, who are believed to have spoken an East Germanic language, and were first reported during the first centuries of the Roman empire in the area which is now Poland, eastern Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Famously, the Hasdingi led a successful invasion of Roman North Africa, creating a kingdom with its capital at Carthage in what is now Tunisia. During the Marcomannic wars, the Hasdingi helped the Romans and were able to settle in the Carpathian and Pannonian areas which are now in Hungary and Romania. At the end of 405, they participated together with Silingi Vandals and Sarmatian Alans in the crossing of the Rhine. Their king Godigisel lost his life in battle against the Franks during the crossing. After some years in Gaul, these peoples moved into the Iberian peninsula. The Hasdingi settled in Gallaecia (today Galicia, Asturias and the north of Portugal) along with the S ...
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Silingi
The Silings or Silingi ( la, Silingae; grc, Σιλίγγαι – ) were a Germanic tribe, part of the larger Vandal group. The Silingi at one point lived in Silesia, and the names ''Silesia'' and ''Silingi'' may be related.Jerzy Strzelczyk, "Wandalowie i ich afrykańskie państwo" p. 29, Warszawa 1992. History The Silingi are first mentioned by Claudius Ptolemaeus in the 2nd century, who wrote that they had lived south of the Suevic Semnone tribe and north of the Carpathian Mountains, around what now is Silesia: The tribe of Nahanarvali is speculated by modern scholars to be the same people as the Silingi. Tacitus Germania, 43 mentions the Naharvali as the keepers of sanctuary of the Lugian federation (the grove to twin gods Alcis). Tacitus does not mention the Silingi; however, he places the Naharvali in about the same geographical area in which Ptolemaeus placed the Silingi. According to some historians, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161 ...
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Vandals
The Vandals were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal Kingdom, Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. The Vandals migrated to the area between the lower Oder and Vistula rivers in the second century BC and settled in Silesia from around 120 BC. They are associated with the Przeworsk culture and were possibly the same people as the Lugii. Expanding into Roman Dacia, Dacia during the Marcomannic Wars and to Pannonia during the Crisis of the Third Century, the Vandals were confined to Pannonia by the Goths around 330 AD, where they received permission to settle from Constantine the Great. Around 400, raids by the Huns from the east forced many Germanic tribes to migrate west into the territory of the Roman Empire and, fearing that they might be targeted next, the Vandals were also pushed westwards, Crossing of the Rhine, crossing the Rhine in ...
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Suevi
The Suebi (or Suebians, also spelled Suevi, Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own names such as the Marcomanni, Quadi, Hermunduri, Semnones, and Lombards. New groupings formed later, such as the Alamanni and Bavarians, and two kingdoms in the Migration Period were simply referred to as Suebian. Although Tacitus specified that the Suebian group was not an old tribal group itself, the Suebian peoples are associated by Pliny the Elder with the Irminones, a grouping of Germanic peoples who claimed ancestral connections. Tacitus mentions Suebian languages, and a geographical "Suevia". The Suevians were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with the invasion of Gaul by the Germanic king Ariovistus during the Gallic Wars. Unlike Tacitus he described them as a single people, distinct from the Marcomanni, within the large ...
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