The term Astur-Cantabrian Wars refers to the long conflict that the Romans waged along the Spanish Cantabrian coast for a decade, between 29 and 19 B.C. The subjugation of Hispania’s last resistant peoples, the Astures and Cantabrians, was the campaign chosen by Augustus in 27 B.C. to consolidate his newly acquired power, securing control over all legions and the peninsula’s gold reserves. However, the conflict lasted longer than expected and forced the ruler to leave, entrusting operations to his generals. They had to defeat the persistent enemy in several battles, one of which took place at Mount Medullius.

Augustus had already demonstrated his military prowess by defeating Mark Antony, but it now became convenient to reaffirm it against a barbarian adversary, thus emulating Julius Caesar. Gaul and Britain had been pacified, so the most practical options were Germania and Hispania. The former would require an extensive campaign in a hostile, uncomfortable territory, so Augustus decided to complete the conquest of Hispania, which he already knew (he had been there in his youth), and where only the northern strip remained unwilling to accept Roman rule. Lucius Annaeus Florus explains this in his Epitome of Roman History:

In the West, nearly all of Hispania was already at peace, except for the part of the Citerior, clinging to the crags at the far end of the Pyrenees, caressed by the ocean. Here two very powerful peoples, the Cantabrians and the Astures, resisted subjugation to the empire.

Emperor Augustus
The statue named Augustus Prima Porta. Credit: Joel Bellviure / Wikimedia Commons

Consequently, Augustus ordered the gates of the Temple of Janus to be opened, a symbol marking the beginning of wars, instructed the dissemination of propaganda about the ferocity of the enemy he was about to face, and at the beginning of 26 B.C., he personally traveled to the Iberian Peninsula. He landed in Tarraco and marched north, planning to establish his headquarters near the front. However, one night, a lightning strike close to his litter—killing one of the slaves who illuminated the path with torches—was interpreted as a warning from Jupiter. Combined with a bout of liver illness, this forced him to return to Tarraco.

The army continued its advance under the command of his legates: Gaius Antistius Vetus, a former suffect consul and supporter of Brutus who had switched sides and now sought favor with the new ruler, was tasked with subduing the Cantabrians in the Citerior; and Publius Carisius, who commanded Lusitania—which encompassed Asturiae and Gallaecia—was responsible for the Astures. Both peoples had been defeated by Caesar in the past and sometimes even joined the legions as auxiliaries. However, according to Roman authors, they often conducted raids against their neighbors, the Vacceans, Turmogians, and Autrigones.

This provided the casus belli that Rome desired for more particular reasons, such as those mentioned earlier: to solidify Augustus’s prestige, gain total control over the legions, and exploit the gold reserves. Yet, it would not be easy. The mountainous, forested terrain hindered troop movements and the construction of suitable camps, while also allowing the indigenous peoples to engage in guerrilla warfare, as Dion Cassius recounts, forcing the Romans to avoid ambushes by advancing along mountain ridges instead of venturing into dense valleys, resulting in slower progress.

Asturian peoples
Asturian peoples and their territory. Credit: Karkeixa / Wikimedia Commons

This did not preclude the use of more open tactics, such as the Cantabrian circle employed by the Cantabrian cavalry and that of the Astures—who would later contribute wings of riders to the legions—where cavalry comprised a significant portion, about a quarter. Ultimately, the tenacious resistance forced Augustus to commit substantial forces to the conflict: up to six legions against the Cantabrians and three against the Astures, not counting auxiliary cohorts and the disembarkation of the Classis Aquitanica at Portus Blendium (today’s Suances). In total, between 70,000 and 80,000 men faced an opposing force of more than double.

Despite all this, the Cantabrians made the mistake of accepting an open-field battle, in which they were no match for Antistius’s Romans. The survivors retreated to Mount Vindio, but suffered a second defeat, and their fortified settlements were mercilessly besieged. The fall of Aracillum, encircled with a 23-kilometer trench similar to Caesar’s tactics at Alesia, led the defenders to immolate themselves to avoid enslavement. Meanwhile, Carisius defeated the Astures, and the conflict was declared over in 25 B.C. The problem came in the aftermath.

Augustus returned to Rome with hostages, closed the doors of the Temple of Janus, constructed another temple in honor of Jupiter Tonans in gratitude for the lightning warning, graciously received an ode written by the poet Horace comparing him to Hercules, gifted 400 sesterces to each citizen, and declined the Senate’s offer to hold a triumph to present a modest image (he had already celebrated in situ with his tribunes, including the young Tiberius, his stepson and future emperor, and Marcellus, his nephew). The Cantabrians and Astures, on the other hand, were far from content.

Cantabrian peoples in Roman times
Cantabrian peoples. Credit: Emilio Gómez Fernández / Wikimedia Commons

First, the victor had taken many as hostages and others as slaves, relocating the rest to the Cis-montane region (that is, south of the Cantabrian Mountains). Second, the tyrannical behavior of the governors put an end to the peace. Carisius was so confident in his superiority that he discharged a large part of the troops and founded a colony called Emerita Augusta, the germ of today’s city of Mérida, but the abuses committed by Lucius Aelius Lamia, the new governor of Tarraconensis, ultimately incited everyone, leading to a second uprising in 22 BCE.

It was the Astures who initiated the rebellion, deceiving the Romans by luring them with an offer to supply wheat in order to catch them by surprise and massacre them. The Cantabrians appeared to be content with the rule of the new Augusti pro praetore legate (provincial governor delegated by Augustus and endowed with imperium), Gaius Furnius, but in reality they despised him for his inexperience and soon joined their neighbors. However, they misjudged Furnius, who demonstrated an extraordinary ability to adapt militarily to mountain warfare and knew how to coordinate effectively with Carisius to face the danger.

In fact, the Cantabrians lost again, and, as three years before in Aracillum, they were forced to entrench themselves in another elevated and fortified location: Mount Medullius, which was immediately besieged by the legions and surrounded by a 15-mile-long enclosure (Roman miles, understood; slightly over 22 kilometers). Its exact location is unknown, as descriptions from the time are too vague and unclear. Florus, for example, briefly summarizes the episode but does not locate the setting: At last, the siege of Mount Medullius took place, around which, after enclosing it with a continuous trench of fifteen miles, the Romans advanced from all sides at once.

Monument to the Cantabrian man
Momument to the Cantabrian erected in Santander. Credit: Year of the Dragon / Wikimedia Commons

Paulus Orosius, a Spanish priest and historian of the fourth century, also writes on the matter: For they also besieged Mount Medullius, which rises above the Minio River, and in which a great multitude of men defended themselves, after encircling it with a trench fifteen miles in length. As we can see, Orosius notes a geographical detail, the Minio River, which, together with an allusion to the interior part of Galicia (Praeterea ulteriores Gallaeciae parte, quae montibus silvisque consitae Oceano terminantur), would be a reference to the Miño River and Galicia. In the province of Orense, there is even a mountain called Medelo, with an evident toponymic similarity, and another called O Castelo where the inscription Sicenata Pacata (“Quiet and pacified”) has been found.

Now, possible Orense locations include Santa Cruz de Arrabaldo and Cabeza de Meda, while other Galician candidates would be in Pontevedra, such as the Aloia mountains (in Tuy) or Santa Tecla (La Guardia), and Mount Cido (in the Caurel range, Lugo, whose name could derive from the Latin word occidio, meaning slaughter), where Roman battle remains have been found and where many yew trees grow, whose leaves and fruits are poisonous and may have been used for the mass suicide mentioned by Florus:

When the barbarians saw their resistance coming to an end, they took refuge in fire and iron, amid a feast, using a poison they usually extracted from the yew, freeing themselves thus from slavery, which seemed more intolerable than death to a people until then unbroken.

Deva river
The Deva River basin, in the mountainous common area of Asturias and Cantabria. Credit: Juenti el toju / Wikimedia Commons

The extension of Gallaecia was greater than it is today, and therefore other suggested locations include the Lastra and Ancares mountain ranges on the Galician-Leonese border. However, while some identify the Minnio with the Miño or even the confluence of the Miño with the Sil, others suggest that the Cares, a river running through the Picos de Europa between the northeastern part of León and the southeastern part of Asturias, is called Miñances in some parts of its course, shifting the location of Mount Medullius to the Cuera range, which runs parallel to the Cantabrian coast between the Asturian municipalities of Llanes and Peñamellera.

This part of the present-day principality was then territory of the Orgenomescan and Avarigini Cantabrians (the Astures extended southward to the Duero River), who appear to be more likely candidates to have been the protagonists of the episode discussed here. Perhaps Orosius was influenced by the fact that he was Galician by birth, probably from Bracara Augusta (today Braga, Portugal), and applied his sources to the environment he knew best, possibly interpreting them erroneously. The Greco-Roman polymath Posidonius, who lived in the first century BCE, said that the Minnion flowed from the land of the Cantabrians, even though we know it originates in the Meira mountain range (Lugo) and was also known as Bainis.

This is explained by historian and priest Eutimio Martino Redondo, who recalls that the original name of the Deva River, the natural border between Asturias and Cantabria, was Minius (the name Deva also applies to a tributary of the Miño, as this was how the mother goddess was referred to) and originates in the Picos de Europa, near Peña Remoña (formerly Remoño), which may have caused a phonetic confusion with “Miño River.” Archaeological evidence seems to support this hypothesis, with what appear to be remains of a Roman trench found at the Pass of Pasaneo.

Yew
An Asturian yew tree. Credit: Sitomon / Wikimedia Commons

As it stands, while classical authors lean toward Galicia, current scholars tend to favor more eastern locations. We’ve seen that Asturias is one, not only in the aforementioned area but also in the Miranda council, where there are archaeological remains of a fort called Meduales not far from Las Médulas. And then there is Cantabria itself, of course.

Martino proposes the Peña Sagra range, a 16-kilometer ridge stretching from Liébana to the Picos de Europa (including the Deva). Other possibilities raised include Peña Cabarga, the Escudo de Cabuérniga range, and the Dobra massif (whose span matches the 15 miles the Roman siege trench would have covered).

Ultimately, with no conclusive evidence, the only recourse is to explain that, as inferred from Florus’ final reference, the entrenchment of the last Cantabrians tragically ended in a mass suicide.

Astur-Cantabrian Wars
Development of the Cantabrian-Asturian Wars (the map situates Mount Medullius in the current Las Médulas region of León). Credit: Ravenloft~commonswiki / Wikimedia Commons

Seeing that there was no escape, and after a ceremonial feast, they ingested yew poison (the common yew, Taxus baccata, was a sacred tree widespread throughout the north whose berries and leaves contain taxine, a combination of alkaloids that in high doses cause hypertension and cardiorespiratory arrest) or, as in Numantia, some threw themselves onto pyres while others took each other’s lives. As Cassius Dio recounts:

Few Cantabrians were taken prisoner; for when they despaired of their freedom, they refused to endure life any longer and so, having first burned down their walls, some slit their throats, others chose to perish in the flames, others ingested a poison by common consent, so that the greater and most warlike part of them perished. The Astures, as soon as they were repelled from a site they were besieging and defeated afterward in battle, did not resist any longer and promptly surrendered.

Indeed, Gaius Furnius left the area to assist Carisius, whom the Astures had surrounded in his own camp and who was already at the limit of his endurance. The arrival of reinforcements saved the situation, and later, in a new pitched battle, the war was brought to an end. It seemed final, yet the leader, Gausonius, managed to escape and continue his guerrilla until 21 BCE. The Astures and Cantabrians would rise once more between 20 and 18 BCE, with peace – though always precarious – finally arriving in 13 BCE.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on October 31, 2024: Monte Medulio, el lugar de la última resistencia cántabra contra la conquista romana cuya ubicación se desconoce

SOURCES

Dion Casio, Historia romana

Lucio Anneo Floro, Epítome de la ‘Historia’ de Tito Livio

Paulo Orosio, Historias

Eutimio Martino, Roma Contra cántabros y astures. Nueva lectura de las fuentes

Joaquín González Echegaray, Las Guerras Cántabras en las fuentes

Joaquín González Echegaray, Los cántabros

Eduardo Peralta Labrador, Los cántabros antes de Roma

Wikipedia, Monte Medulio

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