History UsefulNotes / LusitanianWars

->''"Viriathus, who from being a bandit became the leader of all Celtiberians, while feigning to retreat from the enemy cavalry, led them to a land plagued by holes on the ground. There, while he rode following a path he alone knew well, the Romans, unfamiliar to the terrain, sank in the swamp and died."''[[note]]Note the wrong usage of "Celtiberians" here, as even ancient sources sometimes get things mixed up with names of Spanish tribes. Frontinus probably chose it because Lusitanians were neither exactly Celts nor culturally Iberians yet were influenced by both, even although they weren't part of the specifical peoples chroniclers called Celtiberians.[[/note]]

War broke out again in 155 BC when a Lusitanian chieftain named Punicus made raids into the lands controlled by the Romans, breaking the treaty and ending the twenty year old peace. Allied with his neighboring Vettones, Punicus obtained important victories against two Roman generals, Lucius Manlius and Calpurnius, and his own death in battle only led to the rise of an even greater leader, his lieutenant Caesarus. The latter not only vanquished the Romans again, but also contributed to the [[UsefulNotes/CeltiberianWars Second Celtiberian War]] (153 BC) by spreading to all Spanish peoples the notion that Rome could be decisively defeated. Naturally, rebellions started here and there, none more ambitious than the exploits of the southern Lusitanian warlord Caucenus, who acquired ships and launched an invasion against Roman colonies in North Africa. The Roman comeback would come surprisingly from Lucius Mummius, a general formerly humiliated by Caesarus; after giving his legionaries a TrainingFromHell, Mummius defeated the peninsular Lusitanians and then recovered Africa from Caucenus. With the arrival of praetors Claudius Marcellus and Atilius Serranus, the former drowning the Celtiberian conflict and the latter destroying the Lusitanian capital Oxthraca, peace came to the peninsula.

However, this changed again when Servius Sulpicius Galba and his superior Lucius Licinius Lucullus arrived in 151 with the intention to solidify the pacification and benefit personally from it. Although they initially found success, the Lusitanians inflicted them heavy losses and forced the Romans to retire to their fortified positions in Conistorgis. As both sides were in somewhat of a stalemate and it seemed the time and place for negotiations, Galba and Lucullus came out with a twisted plan to defeat the Lusitanians: they simulated to offer a juicy peace treaty, and when the tribes accepted and gathered unarmed before them as demanded, the Romans attacked treacherously and slaughtered them. This scheme, which was called the Massacre of the Lusitanians and had place in 150 BC, saw thousands of tribesmen killed or sold as slaves in Gaul and effectively ended the conflict. Victorious, Galba resumed his praetor tasks while Lucullus chilled out in Turdetania suffocating a new invasion of Africa, both of them receiving little to no practical comeuppance for their dirty tactics. Although the betrayal had spurred many tribes to act against the Romans, they now lacked strength to do so, and after many failures it seemed resistance was definitely futile. However, a survivor of the Massacre named [[FromNobodyToNightmare Viriathus]] had something to say about it.

In 147 BC, Viriathus and a contingent of Lusitanian raiders were surrounded in Turdetania by the Roman general Caius Vetilius, who claimed to offer them peace. This time, however, Viriathus knew better and convinced his pals to tell the Romans to go to hell. Fate seemed to be over them, but then Viriathus made the miracle: he led his group to perform a daring escape and in turn lured the Romans into a trap in the Barbesula river, which turned the tide and allowed them to mow down the invaders, among them Vetilius himself. Through this shocking victory, Viriathus became a leader among the Lusitanians and inspired new movements of resistance across the entire Iberian Peninsula. He soon followed up with many victories against Rome, and defeated Gaius Plautius, Claudius Unimanus and Gaius Negidius thanks to his knowledge of the terrain and sneaky guerrilla tactics. Only Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, riding on Rome's full resources thanks to the recent ending of the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Third Punic War]], managed to force Viriathus to retreat to Baecor in 145, but he failed to arrest the chieftain, and it resulted in most of Aemilianus's forces being lost in ambushes around Pax Iulia.

Viriathus continued scoring basically victory after victory against Rome for a long time, and although he did suffer some setbacks, his army basically strolled through the peninsula inciting tribes to revolt, causing the third and last Celtiberian War in [[UndefeatableLittleVillage Numantia]]. Desperate to solve the situation, Aemilianus's son Servilianus amassed a large army complete with Numidian WarElephants and marched against Viriathus in 143 BC, but this effort, although fruitful at first in recapturing several cities, ended up backfiring spectacularly: the Lusitanian leader defeated him soundly in Erisana and forced him to accept a peace treaty in Viriathus's terms, acknowledging Viriathus as ''dux'' or leader of his people and declaring Lusitania an independent nation and friend of Rome, nothing less. Naturally, it didn't take much time for Rome to reject such a humiliating treaty and send another general, this time Servilianus's brother Quintus Servilius Caepio, to continue waging war. He was aided by Marcus Popillius Laenas, who was interested in defeating Viriathus in order to weaken the morale of the Celtiberians who still resisted in Numantia.

The end of the war, however, didn't come through a great victory or a glorious conquest, but by treachery. Three Iberian emissaries named Audax, Minurus and Ditalcus, upon returning from a meeting with Caepio, murdered Viriathus in his camp, apparently in the belief they would receive great lands and riches in exchange for their service to Rome. The outcome of this action was bitter to everybody, as instead of receiving any reward, the three were kicked out by Caepio at the voice of [[RewardedAsATraitorDeserves "Rome doesn't pay traitors"]], while the Roman general himself was refused his ''triumph'' by the Senate for the conspiracy. Anyway, it effectively ended the Lusitanian resistance, with Viriathus's successor Tautalus being defeated in Saguntum and forced to sign peace with Caepio. The Iberian Peninsula would not be completely pacified until the era of Augustus, but it would never saw again an uprising of the caliber shown by its fallen hero.

The UsefulNotes/CeltiberianWars happened more or at the same time as the Lusitanian War. Although they took place in a different part of the Iberian Peninsule and their forces were never strongly associated to Viriathus, it's impossible to understand either conflict without their relationship to each other. As mentioned earlier, Numantia was perhaps the UrExample of UndefeatableLittleVillage, and that was its role for most of the Roman wars in Hispania: while Viriathus and company roamed the peninsula with the goal to sack enemy settlements and destroy their military forces, the Numantines remained pinned inside their terrains, though successfully resisting all attempts of conquest. When Scipio Aemilianus finally broke their resistance by means of a ludicrously severe siege, they were the last great Spanish faction to fall in the war.

A series of wars fought between UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic and the Lusitanian tribes in the Iberian Peninsula. Greek historian Polybius called this war ''Pyrinos Polemos'', meaning War on Fire. This episode of history originally came from an attempt by the Roman Republic to conquer Hispania during the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Second Punic War]] in order to cut Hannibal's reinforcement lines towards UsefulNotes/{{Italy}}. However, what at first appeared to be a simple conquest eventually turned into two hundred years of back and forth rebellions and pacifications of the local tribes. Among all of them, the wars against the Lusitanian tribe (155-139 BC) were the best documented, in no small part because the general perception was that the mighty armies of Rome [[DavidVsGoliath got their asses massively kicked by very inferior forces]] for years there and only obtained the victory through a vile treason. The wars saw the rise and fall of one of the greatest historical figures in the Iberian Peninsula, the chieftain Viriathus, as well as a new way to wage war, the ''latrocinium'' or guerrilla warfare.[[note]]Spaniards weren't the first to use guerrilla, but they arguably took it to a whole new level in this and other wars.[[/note]]

->''"Viriathus, who from being a bandit became the leader of all Celtiberians, while feigning to retreat from the enemy cavalry, led them to a land plagued by holes on the ground. There, while he rode following a path he alone knew well, the Romans, unfamiliar to the terrain, sank in the swamp and died."''
-->-- '''Sextus Julius Frontinus''', ''Stratagemas''[[note]]Note the wrong usage of "Celtiberians" here, as even ancient sources sometimes get things mixed up with names of Spanish tribes. Frontinus probably chose it because Lusitanians were neither exactly Celts nor culturally Iberians yet were influenced by both, even although they weren't part of the specifical peoples chroniclers called Celtiberians.[[/note]]

* Joao Aguiar's historical novel ''Literature/ViriatoIberiaContraRoma'' covers Viriathus' participation in the war from beginning to end.

-->-- '''Sextus Julius Frontinus''', ''Stratagemas''

A series of wars fought between UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic and the Lusitanian tribes in the Iberian Peninsula. Greek historian Polybius called this war ''Pyrinos Polemos'', meaning War on Fire. This episode of history originally came from an attempt by the Roman Republic to conquer Hispania during the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Second Punic War]] in order to cut Hannibal's reinforcement lines towards UsefulNotes/{{Italy}}. However, what at first appeared to be a simple conquest eventually turned into two hundred years of back and forth rebellions and pacifications of the local tribes. Among all of them, the wars against the Lusitanian tribe (155-139 BC) were the best documented, in no small part because the general perception was that the mighty armies of Rome [[DavidVsGoliath got their asses massively kicked by very inferior forces]] for years there and only obtained the victory through a vile treason. The wars saw the rise and fall of one of the greatest historical figures in the Iberian Peninsula, the chieftain Viriathus, as well as a new way to wage war, the ''latrocinium'' or guerrilla warfare.[[note]]Iberians weren't the first to use guerrilla, but they took it to a new level.[[/note]]

A series of wars fought between UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic and the Lusitanian tribes in the Iberian Peninsula. Greek historian Polybius called this war ''Pyrinos Polemos'', meaning War on Fire. This episode of history originally developed as an attempt by the Roman Republic to conquer Hispania during the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Second Punic War]] in order to cut Hannibal's reinforcement lines towards UsefulNotes/{{Italy}}. However, what at first appeared to be a simple conquest eventually turned into two hundred years of back and forth rebellions and pacifications of the local tribes. Among all of them, the wars against the Lusitanian tribe (155-139 BC) were the best documented, in no small part because the general perception was that the mighty armies of Rome [[DavidVsGoliath got their asses massively kicked by very inferior forces]] for years there and only obtained the victory through a vile treason. The wars saw the rise and fall of one of the greatest historical figures in the Iberian Peninsula, the chieftain Viriathus, as well as a new way to wage war, the ''latrocinium'' or guerrilla warfare.[[note]]Iberians weren't the first to use guerrilla, but they took it to a new level.[[/note]]

Rome had been campaigning in Hispania since the Second Punic War, in which Rome and Carthage had struggled for the control of the pensinsula. Spanishh tribes often opposed the Romans due to the allegiance of many of them to Hannibal, which actively divided Hispania between those who supported the Roman rule and those who preferred the Carthaginians and/or just wanted to be left alone. After Carthage lost the war, Roman got a hold of Hispania and founded two large provinces in 197 BC, Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior, as part of an effort to turn Hispania into a productive Roman territory. The first direct war between Rome and the Lusitanian tribes happened three years later, when Lucius Aemillius Paulus, the man who conquered Macedonia for Rome, was sent to manage the Ulterior province. Although suffering rebellions from the ferocious native tribes, Cato the Elder had managed to pacify the lands contained in the provinces, so Paulus and his sucessor Publius Junius Brutus were interested in expanding the terrain, most specifically towards the Lusitanian nation. The latter was forced to sign a peace treaty favorable to Rome after some bloody battles, so a period of relative peace took place under the Roman rule and its heavy taxes.

War broke out again in 155 BC when a Lusitanian chieftain named Punicus made raids into the lands controlled by the Romans, breaking the treaty and ending the twenty year peace. Allied with his neighboring Vettones, Punicus obtained important victories against two Roman generals, Lucius Manlius and Calpurnius, and his own death in battle only led to the rise of an even greater leader, his lieutenant Caesarus. The latter not only vanquished the Romans again, but also contributed to the [[UsefulNotes/CeltiberianWars Second Celtiberian War]] (153 BC) by spreading to all Spanish peoples the notion that Rome could be decisively defeated. Naturally, rebellions started here and there, none more ambitious than the exploits of the southern Lusitanian warlord Caucenus, who acquired ships and launched an invasion against Roman colonies in North Africa. The Roman comeback would come surprisingly from Lucius Mummius, a general formerly humiliated by Caesarus; after giving his legionaries a TrainingFromHell, Mummius defeated the peninsular Lusitanians and then recovered Africa from Caucenus. With the arrival of praetors Claudius Marcellus and Atilius Serranus, the former drowning the Celtiberian conflict and the destroying the Lusitanian capital Oxthraca, peace came to the peninsula.

However, this changed again when Servius Sulpicius Galba and his superior Lucius Licinius Lucullus arrived in 151 with the intention to solidify the pacification and benefit from it. Although they initially found success, the Lusitanians inflicted them heavy losses and forced the Romans to retire to their fortified positions in Conistorgis. As both sides were in somewhat of a stalemate and it seemed the time and place for negotiations, Galba and Lucullus came out with a twisted plan to defeat the Lusitanians: they simulated to offer a juicy peace treaty, and when the tribes accepted and gathered unarmed before them, the Romans attacked treacherously and slaughtered them. The scheme, which was called the Massacre of the Lusitanians and had place in 150 BC, saw thousands of tribesmen killed or sold as slaves in Gaul and effectively ended the conflict. Victorious, Galba resumed his praetor tasks while Lucullus chilled out in Turdetania suffocating a new invasion of Africa, both of them receiving little to no practical comeuppance for their dirty tactics. Although the betrayal had spurred many tribes to act against the Romans, they now lacked strength to do so, and after many failures it seemed resistance was futile. However, a survivor of the Massacre named [[FromNobodyToNightmare Viriathus]] had something to say about it.

In 147 BC, Viriathus and a contingent of Lusitanian raiders were surrounded in Turdetania by the Roman general Caius Vetilius, who offered them peace. This time, however, Viriathus knew better and convinced his pals to tell the Romans to go to hell. Fate seemed to be over them, but then Viriathus made the miracle: he led his group to perform a daring escape and in turn lured the Romans into a trap in the Barbesula river, which turned the tide and allowed them to mow down the invaders, among them Vetilius himself. Through this shocking victory, Viriathus became a leader among the Lusitanians and inspired new movements of resistance across the entire Iberian Peninsula. He soon followed up with many victories against Rome and defeated Gaius Plautius, Claudius Unimanus and Gaius Negidius thanks to his knowledge of the terrain and sneaky guerrilla tactics. Only Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, riding on Rome's full resources thanks to the recent ending of the [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Third Punic War]], managed to force Viriathus to retreat to Baecor in 145, but he failed to arrest the chieftain, and it resulted in most of Aemilianus's forces being lost in ambushes around Pax Iulia.

Viriathus continued scoring basically victory after victory against Rome for a long time, and although he did suffer some setbacks, his army basically strolled through the peninsula inciting tribes to revolt, causing the third and last Celtiberian War in [[UndefeatableLittleVillage Numantia]]. Desperate to solve the situation, Aemilianus's son Servilianus amassed a large army complete with Numidian WarElephants and marched against Viriathus in 143 BC, but this effort, although fruitful at first in recapturing several cities, ended up backfiring spectacularly: the Iberian leader defeated him soundly in Erisana and forced him to accept a peace treaty in Viriathus's terms, acknowledging Viriathus as ''dux'' or leader of the Lusitanians and declaring Lusitania an independent nation and friend of Rome, nothing less. Naturally, it didn't take much time for Rome to reject such a humiliating treaty and send another general, this time Servilianus's brother Quintus Servilius Caepio, to continue waging war. He was aided by Marcus Popillius Laenas, who was interested in defeating Viriathus in order to weaken the morale of the Celtiberians who still resisted in Numantia.

The end of the war, however, didn't come through a great victory or a glorious conquest, but by treachery. Three Iberian emissaries named Audax, Minurus and Ditalcus, upon returning from a meeting with Caepio, murdered Viriathus in his camp, in the belief they would receive great lands and riches in exchange for their service to Rome. The outcome of this action was bitter to everybody, as instead of receiving any reward, the three were executed by Caepio at the voice of [[RewardedAsATraitorDeserves "Rome doesn't pay traitors"]], while the Roman general himself was refused his ''triumph'' by the Senate for the conspiracy. Anyway, it effectively ended the Lusitanian resistance, with Viriathus's successor Tautalus being defeated in Saguntum and forced to sign peace with Caepio. The Iberian Peninsula would not be completely pacified until the era of Augustus, but it would never saw an uprising of the caliber shown by its fallen hero.

The UsefulNotes/CeltiberianWars happened more or at the same time as the Lusitanian War. Although they took place in a different part of the Iberian Peninsule and their forces were never as associated to Viriathus as they had been to Caucenus, it's impossible to understand either conflict without their relationship to each other. As mentioned earlier, Numantia was perhaps the UrExample of UndefeatableLittleVillage, and that was its role for most of the Roman wars in Hispania: while Viriathus and company roamed the peninsula with the goal to sack enemy settlements and destroy their military forces, the Numantines remained pinned inside their terrains, though successfully resisting all attempts of conquest. When Scipio Aemilianus finally broke their resistance by means of a ludicrously severe siege, they were the last great Iberian faction to fall in the war.

* Spanish FolkMetal band Salduie has several songs about Viriathus and the war.

!!Tropes for this page:

* TwentyFourHourArmor: It is said explicitly that Viriathus slept wearing his mail armor and that his murderers had to stab him in the neck, the only vulnerable spot.
* TheAce: Viriathus was by all accounts a charismatic leader, a skilled tactician and a fearsome warrior. In a case of WorthyOpponent, Roman and Greek historians were so in awe of him that one of them even called him "the Barbarian Hannibal", and many a modern historian compared him to the Homeric heroes.
* ActionGirl: According to Roman historians, their armies encountered women warriors fighting alongside men in Lusitania and the nearby Bracari territories. This is believed to have been usual among European tribes, as other Romans in Germania and Britannia reported similar sights.
* TheAlliance: Zig-zagged. Many Iberian peoples were attracted to Viriathus's command thanks to his success, but the tribally diverse nature of the Iberian peninsula meant this alliance never became nationwide, with other powerful and geographically nearby forces like the Celtiberians and the northern Celts remaining unaffiliated for most of the conflict despite Viriathus's attempts to ally with them (he ultimately succeeded, causing the Numantine War and attracting a large Gallaeci reinforcement army, but both of them only when it was too late - he did not even live to see the latter). Still, it seems Viriathus and his colleagues accepted in their ranks pretty much everybody who was willing to fight along them, including bandits, people from other tribes, women warriors and even Roman deserters, which certainly makes for one of the most inclusive alliances up to the point.
* AmbiguouslyEvil:
** For what we know, Gaius Vetilius might have perfectly been honest when he offered peace and fertile lands to the Lusitanians if they put down their warrior ways. Unfortunately, the fact that Galba had ruined Rome’s image for the natives meant Viriathus and his people had no reason to trust him.
** While it is clear that Rome considered Caepio deserved no glory because the conflict had ended in a dishonorable note under his consulate, there has been a lot of discussion about his actual role in Viriathus's treason, or even if he took part in it at all. Some believe that he explicitly bribed Audax, Minurus and Ditalcus to murder Viriathus (possibly concocting the plan with Popillius, or even directly under Popillius's influence), but others think that they acted on their own will believing Caepio would reward them and that the Roman consul was genuinely shocked and disgusted when he found it. Judging for Caepio's posterior negotiations with the surrendered Lusitanians, in which he acted quite favorably towards them and gave them lands and a significant amount of peace, it is entirely possible that he wasn't the scheming villain history has portrayed him as.
* AmbiguousSituation: Sources cite a Roman governor named Quintius as one of Viriathus's victims. It has been suggested that he might be actually Quintus Pompeius, the one who would later be embarrassed in Numantia, due to a typo in his name's spelling ("Quintius"/"Quintus"). However, it is unclear whether Roman laws would have allowed him to rule in two different provinces in such a short time, and other sources cite him as ''Gaius'' Quintius instead.
* AntiHero: Viriathus wasn't devoid of morally questionable decisions either, as it's common in historical wars. For instance, he was willing to hand over Caepio many of the hostage and Roman deserters he demanded in his peace treaty, and he ordered himself to kill many of them (although this might have been a MercyKill to spare them the torture and crucifixion the Romans would have probably put them through had he handed them alive).
* AnArmAndALeg: Cutting off hands was an usual punishment to war prisoners both in Rome and Hispania. A particularly special case happened when the Roman general Aemilianus captured a guerrilla fighter named Connobas and his gang: he spared them, as the Iberian had uncharacteristically surrendered to save his men a la Vercingetorix, but ordered to cut the hands of all of his warriors.
* AncestralWeapon: All the tribes in Hispania considered their weapons to be sacred, so revolts often exploded simply because Romans demanded villages to hand their weapons over, and Lusitanians weren't an exception.
* ArcherArchetype: A subversion. By this time, neither Spaniards nor Romans use bows, relying instead in javelins and slings.
* ArcWords: "Rome doesn´t pay traitors". The quote (which is apocryphal, by the way) was sort of Zig-Zagged itself, as Rome did have traitors in its payroll after all and proved it with Galba and possibly Caepio.
* ArmyOfThievesAndWhores: Curius and Apuleius, Spanish captains and resident ThoseTwoGuys, were called "thieves", "robbers" and even "scoundrels" in most sources due to their personal approach to war. They used to work as bandits and harassers, and sometimes seemed more interested in sacking and plundering everything they could get their hands on than in accomplishing their military objectives. Some authors believe at least Apuleius wasn't even indigenous to begin with, but a Roman deserter who had gone native for the spoils. Their greed was demonstrated in a memorable occasion in which they attempted an ambitious ambush to steal all of Servilianus's gold and it ended up with Curius's death (see DeathByMaterialism below).
* AttackAttackRetreatRetreat: The Romans's reaction during the battle of Erisana according to Appian's chronicles. Servilianus had the city besieged and it was about to fall, but Viriathus came to the city's aid and somehow managed to sneak his army inside of the walls during the night without the Romans noticing. When Servilianus was about to order what he believed to be the final assault against the walls at dawn, he was shocked to see Viriathus and his forces coming out the gates and butchering his siege workers, and was forced to make his entire army retreat.
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Viriathus was reputedly a great warrior aside from a great tactician. The Spaniards's belief in this trope was so strong that it led to the fortuitous death of the captured Gaius Vetilius: he was so fat and out of shape that the Lusitanian warrior who captured him couldn't believe he was really the commander of the Roman forces, so he slew him instead of taking him as a hostage.
* BadassArmy: The Roman legions are always an example, but the Lusitanian forces weren't any less, considering they inflicted them painful losses for years despite their continuous inferiority.
* BandOfBrothers: Iberians believed in UndyingLoyalty over all things and were willing to die for their chieftains and people. The betrayal of Audax, Minurus and Ditalcus was not only incredibly uncommon (many Roman authors note that it was the first, only and last insubordination in Viriathus's camp), but probably even made possible by its rarity; warriors of lesser rank like them were allowed to enter Viriathus's hut because nobody believed any of them would betray his chief.
* BarbarianLonghair: The Lusitanians were known sport long manes of hair.
* BatmanGambit: Viriathus was a master at feigning defeat, making the Roman believe they were winning the battle, in order to lead them to lethal ambushes. He famously defeated Vetilius this way, as well as praetor Quintius, whom Viriathus entangled in a complex ruse near of his bastion in Mons Veneris and defeated him soundly.
* BeastOfBattle: Lusitanians were said to sneak into Roman camps at night, kill the sentinels and then dump captured wolves and wild bulls inside the walls to wreak havoc.
* TheBerserker: Orosious and Florus recount how a Lusitanian footsoldier, surrounded by multiple Roman horsemen, resorted to attack them all out, killing a horse and immediately beheaded its rider. The Romans panicked so hard that they fled away from the warrior and left him alive.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: Possibly the Lusitanians. Livy said they were quite peaceful when they were not chopping heads.
* BigDamnHeroes:
** The army led by Quintus Fabius Maximus certainly saved the day for the Roman side when it reached Hispania in 145 BC, as up to that point Gaius Lelius Sapiens was struggling against the natives and another Roman defeat was in the horizon.
** On the other hand, the Arevaci, Titthi and Belli tribes summoned by Viriathus after his first defeat to Maximus did the same for the other side by attracting the attention of the Romans with the Numantine War.
* BloodKnight: The Vettones, perennial allies of the Lusitanians, were apparently even more warlike than them. A well known anecdote happened when some of them visited a Roman camp after the war ended: the Vettones became shocked at seeing legionaries resting and slacking in their free time, as they could not fathom how could a warrior ''not'' spend all of his awake time training or fighting.
* BlowThatHorn: It is said Spaniards communicated by blowing horns and whistling, allowing them to coordinate their forces across the land.
* CombatPragmatist: The Lusitanians's main asset during the war. They knew that executing ''bellum'', that is, going against the Romans in open battlefields, equated to military suicide, so they resorted to ''latrocinium'' or guerrilla fighting. Thanks to their knowledge of the environment and the flexibility of their bands of warriors, they were routinely able to outmaneuver the Roman legions and set traps and ambushes for them in difficult terrains, in which the Romans's rigid formations were more a hindrance than an advantage.
* ConservationOfNinjutsu: Played straight with the Lusitanian forces. While their armies were inferior when fighting in open field, their warriors proved superior in the chaotic scrambles resultant from the rupture of the Roman formations in difficult terrain, which typically forced the legionaries to duel unsupported like Celts were accustomed to do.
* CoolHorse: Lusitanian horses were known to be incredibly strong and fast, which gave their riders the advantage to their Italic equivalents. Pliny famously stated Spanish mares were impregnated by the west wind, so they gave birth to half-divine foals.
* CoolSword: Lusitanians favored the Celtic straight sword called by the Romans ''gladius hispaniensis'', although they might have also used the South East saber (later more famously named falcata) due to so many years of sacking and stealing around its territory. Spaniard blacksmiths created all of them using metallurgic methods that made the swords frighteningly strong and sharp, and their design was so efficient that the Roman armies adopted the gladius for their own armies and used it for several centuries.
* DeathByMaterialism: Iberian warlords Curius and Apuleius were infamous for their greed, and it ended up being their bane in a battle against Servilianus in the Anas river. They might have been ordered by Viriathus to keep an eye on the Romans and punish them by the accustomed methods (or not, as sources cannot decide if they were affiliated to Viriathus in the first place), but the two generals opted to concoct a plan to assault them and steal their goods. Leading large skirmishing parties, they ambushed Servilianus's army in the river and overpowered it enough for Curius's squad to run away with all of the Roman gold and a ludicrously large cadre of prisoners. Unfortunately for them, this maneuver allowed Servilianus to recover his footing and hunt down Curius, recovering all of the war spoils and prisoners and crashing the Iberians's army.
* DefeatingTheUndefeatable: Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus marched with 15,000 soldiers and 2,000 cavalry to join forces with the already large army of Gaius Laelius Sapiens. His son, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, came with 18,000 soldiers, 1,600 cavalry, 10 war elephants and 300 Numidian mercenaries. Both armies ended up being ripped apart by the Lusitanians, and the latter case was so disastrous for the Romans that Servilianus had to allow Viriathus to write their next peace treaty in his own terms.
* DespairEventHorizon: When the Lusitanian camp discovered Viriathus had been murdered.
* {{Determinator}}: Spanish tribes never stopped rebelling against their captors and fighting for a freedom they knew they would probably never get. War prisoners often committed suicide before or after being captured, and Roman besiegers often entered enemy cities to find literally every fighter dead.
* DownerEnding: Viriathus dies and Hispania is conquered and turned into a Roman territory. The end.
* TheDreaded: Viriathus, obviously, but also the war in Hispania as a whole, including the UsefulNotes/CeltiberianWars: it was deemed such a brutal conflict that Rome had serious problems to recruit soldiers to send in there. The Roman conquest of Hispania has been compared to the modern UsefulNotes/VietnamWar of all things.
* FolkHero: Viriathus is this today in both Portugal and Spain.
* FromNobodyToNightmare: It's unknown if Viriathus was a mere shepherd before the war or if he belonged to the Lusitanian ruling class, as sources support both versions and modern historians don't seem to decide between any of the two. However, it is clear that Viriathus was virtually unknown to the Romans until he entered the game and started beating them silly. As bonus points, he was called literally a nightmare for Rome.
* GenocideBackfire: Without the Massacre of the Lusitanians, Viriathus would have never become a leader and his people would have not been out for revenge.
* GeoEffects: In several forms and flavors, like the one quoted at the beginning of the article.
* GoingNative: Possibly Curius and Apuleius. They are traditionally counted as native tribesmen, but the latter's typically Roman name has made some modern authors suspect think he (or both of them) was actually a Roman captain that deserted and became a leader of bandits in the search of more profit.
* GoOutWithASmile: Exploited. According to Strabo, many Spaniard fighters carried a phial of poison extracted from the plant ''Ranunculus Sardonia'' in order to commit suicide if they were captured. This poison has the particularity of contracting the facial muscles upon dying, which gives the corpse a creepy gaping grin. It naturally scared the shit out of the Romans, who believed the dead were laughing at them from the underworld.
* GradualGrinder: The Roman forces were accustomed to fight large, Punic Wars-style battles in open field where their formations could trample their enemies and deal decisive defeats. The Lusitanians, on the other hand, were skilled in disjointed brawls where the norm was dealing surprise damage and running away only to return later and repeat. Once Viriathus added smart coordination and long-term strategizing, the game was his.
* HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic: TruthInTelevision, as Lusitanians disliked helmets. Many of them did not wear them, and those who did wore light leather hoods.
* HeroicBSOD:
** Servilianus's entire camp once suffered a critical one when Viriathus, who up to the point had been on the losing end of a battle, turned the tide by ambushing their chasing forces and came to the very gates of the Roman camp. The legionaries were so flustered by the turn that many of them literally hid under their tents.
** The Roman senate when they were forced to agree with Viriathus's treaty after he defeated Servilianus for the second and last time.
** The previous pount was nothing compared to when the Lusitanians discovered Viriathus had been murdered. Not having the murderers to vent their rage on them, the warriors mourned Viriathus so hard and celebrated such a funeral that Roman authors who heard of it say it was comparable to Achilles's obsequies in honor to Patroclus in ''Literature/TheIliad''.
* HitAndRunTactics: Viriathus favored the tactic called ''concursare'' by the Romans: he would order his warriors to charge in a disorganized mass, then stop abruptly before clashing lines with the Roman legions, and then turn their backs and retreat, all while shouting taunts and throwing javelins and sling stones at them. Through this method, which sometimes needed several iterations to make an effect, they got the disciplined Roman infuriated and prone to break formation in the process of chasing them, which eliminated their main advantage and allowed the Lusitanians to lead them to ambushes in unfavorable terrains.
* HomeBase: Mons Veneris (whose current day place remains a mystery) was used by Viriathus as his headquarters at several points of the war.
* HonorBeforeReason: Among ancient Spaniards, dying was thoroughly preferable to being slaved or betraying their chief. When captured, their women used to kill their children with their own hands before taking their own lives. That's why Audax, Minurus and Ditalcus's action was so reviled.
* HopelessWar: Any war against the Roman empire was a hopeless war in Antiquity given its sheer enormity and amount of resources and manpower, which ensured any victory against them would followed by the arrival of an even bigger, angrier army. Adding to the fact that Hispania was a succulent territory due to its rich natural resources and warm climate, it is easy to see Rome would just never give it up after the wars in Carthage and Macedonia left them with both hands free. The fact that Viriathus imposed a peace treaty on Servilianus instead of simply butchering him reveals he was aware of this, as well as probably tired of waging war for a decade without seeing the end of it. Even if he did not trust the Romans, trying luck and calling the match off in a position of superiority was preferable to just keep fighting until dying of old age or by the millionth Roman sword.
* HorsebackHeroism: Cavalry composed apparently like a fourth part of the Lusitanian forces, and they were known to be scarily skilled riders. Moreover, in an innovative strategy, they didn't use their horses only for fighting as it was usual at the time: every rider often carried a second warrior whom they would insert and extract from the battlefield wherever they would be needed, thus creating large groups of foot soldiers out of nowhere and removing them from the field when their enemies managed to react.
* IHaveManyNames: Minurus, Viriathus's third killer, is also called Minouros and even Nicorontes in some sources.
* ImprovisedWeapon: Boulders, logs and carts loaded with burning tow were good to build barricades and ambushes in narrow mountain passes.
* LongRangeFighter: Although the Spaniards were great swordsmen, they also liked javelins and slings because they allowed them to operate from safe positions in ambushes and skirmishes.
* MeaningfulName:
** "Punicus" comes from "Punic", a Greco-Latin word for "Phoenician" or "Carthaginian". It is believed that he worked as a mercenary for Phoenicians or Carthaginians in Southern Spain before becoming a rebel, the name being thus a title in the vein of Scipio Africanus.
** "Caesarus" comes apparently from the Punic word for "elephant" (the same which gave Julius Caesar his surname), meaning a powerful, imposing individual.
** "Viriathus" means "The one who wears ''viria''" in Celtic. ''Viria'' were arm ornaments worn solely by chieftains, making it a title meant for commanders and leaders.
* OccupiersOutOfOurCountry: Popular culture has this as Viriathus's noble goal, but reality is probably much more prosaic, as by this point in history Lusitanians fought mostly for themselves. Revenge aside, their desire to kick the Roman rule out of the Iberian peninsula was likely because they wanted to be free to sack and pillage through a disorganized, tribal Hispania again.
* PaperTiger: Viriathus exposed the Roman legions as this. Although they were unstoppable in open field, they struggled to keep their formation in certain terrains and became stupidly vulnerable when forced to scramble in midst of the chaos.
* PowerCopying: The Romans adopted the ''gladius hispaniensis'' from the Celtiberian mercenaries they fought against during the Punic Wars. Lusitanians also used it.
* ProudWarriorRace: The Lusitanians.
* RagTagBunchOfMisfits: Unlike Rome, whose legions were formed by professional soldiers trained and organized in camps, the Spanish forces were mostly informal militias drawn from villages and counting on their warrior culture and traditions.
* RedBaron: "Terror Romanorum" ("The Terror of Romans") for Viriathus.
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Done by Viriathus and the people of Hispania since the Massacre of the Lusitanians.
* RockBeatsLaser: Subverted in that Lusitanians weren't exactly cavemen, but their military machinery was substantially less organized than the Roman one, and ''that'' was precisely their advantage when they learned to use it strategically.
* {{Seppuku}}: Aside from the Spanish custom to commit suicide before becoming slaves, Viriathus's camp celebrated gladiator games to honor his fallen chief during his funeral, and it's said many of them fought to death so they could follow him to afterlife.
* ScreamingWarrior: The Celts had the custom to bellow war cries before charging, which Romans called ''barritus'' comparing them to roars of beasts.
* ShieldBash: The Celtic Spanish round shield, called ''caetra'', was equipped with a large, conical iron boss that served to ram the opponent.
* ShockingDefeatLegacy: The battle of Erisana, which concluded with Viriathus annihilating Servilianus's army and forcing him to sign for peace, was so humiliating for Rome that they called the subsequent peace period ''deformem pacem'' ("the abominable peace").
* TheSmartGuy:
** Viriathus was possibly the first enemy of Rome to capitalize structuredly on the structural weaknesses of open field battle and Roman legions (other enemies of Rome like Pyrrus or Hannibal had simply tried to out-strategize them while using the same frontal war approach). He knew the Spanish warriors couldn't compete directly against the Romans, so he instead worked on the main advantages of his warrior culture, namely their superior mobility, flexibility and adaptation to the environment, which allowed him to throw the legions off their comfort zone and pick them apart.
** Aemilianus, the only man in history to snatch a clean victory from Viriathus, was this too. Accustomed to unconventional warfare thanks to his experience in the Third Macedonian War and the advice of his uncle Scipio Aemilianus, he gained the advantage simply by seeing Viriathus's traps coming and accordingly stopping his troops to bite the bait. He only failed in his task to end the war because Viriathus evaded capture for long enough to grind his forces down before those could make a difference.
** Gaius Laelius Sapiens, whose last name means "Wise". He was instrumental in Aemilianus's success by distracting the Lusitanian forces from other directions to force them to distribute their troops.
* SoldierVsWarrior: Roman professional legionaries vs. Lusitanian warring militiamen.
* StealthHiBye: Viriathus divided his men into relatively small squads to ease the disbanding and retreating in all directions every time they lost the surprise factor, thus appearing and disappearing in the forests at will. It gave the Romans the impression that they were fighting an intangible enemy.
* WarElephants: Used by Servilianus. As accustomed, they ended up being AwesomeButImpractical.

Rome had been campaigning in Hispania since the Second Punic War, in which Rome and Carthage had struggled for the control of the pensinsula. Iberian tribes often opposed the Romans due to the allegiance of many of them to Hannibal, which actively divided Hispania between those who supported the Roman rule and those who preferred the Carthaginians and/or just wanted to be left alone. After Carthage lost the war, Roman got a hold of Hispania and founded two large provinces in 197 BC, Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior, as part of an effort to turn Hispania into a productive Roman territory. The first direct war between Rome and the Lusitanian tribes happened three years later, when Lucius Aemillius Paulus, the man who conquered Macedonia for Rome, was sent to manage the Ulterior province. Although suffering rebellions from the ferocious native tribes, Cato the Elder had managed to pacify the lands contained in the provinces, so Paulus and his sucessor Publius Junius Brutus were interested in expanding the terrain, most specifically towards the Lusitanian nation. The latter was forced to sign a peace treaty favorable to Rome after some bloody battles, so a period of relative peace took place under the Roman rule and its heavy taxes.

War broke out again in 155 BC when a Lusitanian chieftain named Punicus made raids into the lands controlled by the Romans, breaking the treaty and ending the twenty year peace. Allied with his neighboring Vettones, Punicus obtained important victories against two Roman generals, Lucius Manlius and Calpurnius, and his own death in battle only led to the rise of an even greater leader, his lieutenant Caisaros. The latter not only vanquished the Romans again, but also contributed to the [[UsefulNotes/CeltiberianWars Second Celtiberian War]] (153 BC) by spreading to all Iberian peoples the notion that Rome could be decisively defeated. Naturally, rebellions started here and there, none more ambitious than the exploits of the southern Lusitanian warlord Caucenus, who acquired ships and launched an invasion against Roman colonies in North Africa. The Roman comeback would come surprisingly from Lucius Mummius, a general formerly humiliated by Caisaros; after giving his legionaries a TrainingFromHell, Mummius defeated the peninsular Lusitanians and then recovered Africa from Caucenus. With the arrival of praetors Claudius Marcellus and Atilius Serranus, the former drowning the Celtiberian conflict and the capturing the Lusitanian capital Oxtraca, peace came to the peninsula.

Viriathus continued scoring basically victory after victory against Rome for a long time, and although he did suffer some setbacks, his army basically strolled through the peninsula inciting tribes to revolt, causing the third and last Celtiberian War in [[UndefeatableLittleVillage Numantia]]. Desperate to solve the situation, Aemilianus's son Servilianus amassed a large army complete with Carthaginian elephants and marched against Viriathus in 143 BC, but this effort, although fruitful at first in recapturing several cities, ended up backfiring spectacularly: the Iberian leader defeated him soundly in Erisana and forced him to accept a peace treaty in Viriathus's terms, acknowledging Viriathus as ''dux'' or leader of the Lusitanians and declaring Lusitania an independent nation and friend of Rome, nothing less. Naturally, it didn't take much time for Rome to reject such a humiliating treaty and send another general, this time Servilianus's brother Quintus Servilius Caepio, to continue waging war. He was aided by Marcus Popillius Laenas, who was interested in defeating Viriathus in order to weaken the morale of the Celtiberians who still resisted in Numantia.

** "Caisaros" comes apparently from the Punic word for "elephant" (the same which gave Julius Caesar his surname), meaning a powerful, imposing individual.

* ActionGirl: According to Roman historians, their armies encountered women warriors fighting alongside men in Lusitania. This is believed to have been usual among barbarians, as other Romans in Gaul, Germania and Britannia reported similar sights.
* TheAlliance: Zig-zagged. Many Iberian peoples were attracted to Viriathus's command thanks to his success, but the tribally diverse nature of the Iberian peninsula meant this alliance never became nationwide, with other powerful and geographically nearby forces like the Celtiberians remaining unaffiliated for most of the conflict despite Viriathus’s repeated attempts to ally with them (he ultimately succeeded, causing the Numantine War, but only when it was too late). Still, it seems Viriathus and his colleagues accepted in their ranks pretty much everybody who was willing to fight along them, including bandits, people from other tribes, women warriors and even Roman deserters, which certainly makes for one of the most inclusive alliances up to the point.

** For what we know, Gaius Vetilius might have perfectly been telling the truth when he offered peace and lands to the Lusitanians if they put down their warrior ways. Unfortunately, the fact that Galba had ruined Rome’s image for the natives meant Viriathus and his people had no reason to trust him.

* AnArmAndALeg: Cutting off hands was an usual punishment to war prisoners both in Rome and Iberia. A particularly special case happened when the Roman general Aemilianus captured a guerrilla fighter named Connobas and his gang: he spared them, as the Iberian had uncharacteristically surrendered to save his men a la Vercingetorix, but ordered to cut the hands of all of his warriors.
* AncestralWeapon: The Lusitanians considered their weapons to be sacred, so revolts often exploded simply because Romans demanded villages to hand their weapons over.
* ArcherArchetype: A subversion. Iberians qualified for the archetype given their affinity for the forests and mountains of Hispania, but unlike the Romans, they didn’t use bows, relying instead in javelins and slings.
* ArcWords: "Rome doesn´t pay traitors". The quote was sort of Zig-Zagged itself, as Rome did have traitors in its payroll after all and proved it with Galba and possibly Caepio.

* AttackAttackRetreatRetreat: The Romans' reaction during the battle of Erisana according to Appian's chronicles. Servilianus had the city besieged and it was about to fall, but Viriathus came to the city's aid and somehow managed to sneak his army inside of the walls during the night without the Romans noticing. When Servilianus was about to order what he believed to be the final assault against the walls at dawn, he was shocked to see Viriathus and his forces coming out the gates and butchering his siege workers, and was forced to make his entire army retreat.
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Viriathus was reputedly a great warrior aside from a great tactician. The Iberians's belief in this trope was so strong that it led to the fortuitous death of the captured Caius Vetilius: he was so fat and out of shape that the Lusitanian warrior who captured him couldn't believe he was really the commander of the Roman forces, so he slew him.

* BandOfBrothers: Iberians believed in UndyingLoyalty over all things and were willing to die for their chieftains and people. The betrayal of Audax, Minurus and Ditalcus was not only incredibly uncommon (many Roman authors note that it was the first, only and last insubordination in Viriathus's camp), but probably even made possible by its rarity; warriors of lesser rank like them were allowed to enter Viriathus's hut because nobody believed any Iberian would betray his lord.
* BarbarianLonghair: The Lusitanians, like Viriathus himself, sported long hair, as well as a BadassBeard.

* BeastOfBattle: The Iberians were said to sneak into Roman camps at night, kill the sentinels and then dump captured wolves and wild bulls inside the walls to wreak havoc.
* TheBerserker: Orosious and Florus recount how a Lusitanian footsoldier, surrounded by multiple Roman horsemen, resorted to attack them with such ferocity that he killed a horse and beheaded its rider immediately. The Romans panicked so hard that they fled away from the warrior and left him alive.

** The army led by Quintus Fabius Maximus certainly saved the day for the Roman side when it reached Hispania in 145 BC, as up to that point Caius Lelius Sapiens was struggling against the natives and a devastating Iberian victory was on the horizon.

* BlowThatHorn: It is said Iberians communicated by blowing horns and whistling, allowing them to coordinate their forces across the land.
* CombatPragmatist: The Lusitanians's main asset during the war. They knew that executing ''bellum'', that is, going against the Romans in open battlefields, equated to military suicide, so they resolved to ''latrocinium'' or guerrilla fighting. Thanks to their knowledge of the environment and the flexibility of their bands of warriors, they were routinely able to outmaneuver the Roman legions and set traps and ambushes for them in difficult terrains, in which the Romans's rigid formations were more a hindrance than an advantage.

* CoolHorse: Lusitanian horses were known to be incredibly strong and fast, which gave their riders the advantage to their Italic equivalents. Pliny famously stated Iberian mares were impregnated by the west wind, so they gave birth to half-divine foals.
* CoolSword: Lusitanians favored the Celtic straight sword called by the Romans ''gladius hispaniensis'', although they might have also used the South East saber (later more famously named falcata) due to so many years of sacking and stealing around its territory. Iberian blacksmiths created all of them using metallurgic methods that made the swords frighteningly strong and sharp, and their design was so efficient that the Roman armies adopted the gladius for their own armies and used it for several centuries.

* DefeatingTheUndefeatable: Quintus Fabius Maximus Emilianus marched with 15,000 soldiers and 2,000 cavalry to join forces with the already large army of Gaius Laelius Sapiens. His son, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, came with 18,000 soldiers, 1,600 cavalry, 10 war elephants and 300 Numidian mercenaries. Both armies ended up losing to the Iberians, the former around Pax Iulia and the latter in Erisana. The second case was so disastrous for the Romans that Servilianus had to allow Viriathus to write their next peace treaty in his own terms.

* {{Determinator}}: Iberian tribes never stopped rebelling against their captors and fighting for a freedom they knew they would probably never get. War prisoners often committed suicide before or after being captured, and Roman besiegers often entered enemy cities to find literally every fighter dead.
* DownerEnding: The war ended with Hispania conquered and turned into a Roman territory. The end.
* TheDreaded: Viriathus, obviously, but also the war in Hispania as a whole: it was deemed such a brutal conflict that Rome had serious problems to recruit soldiers to send in there. The Roman conquest of Hispania has been compared to the modern UsefulNotes/VietnamWar of all things.

* GenocideBackfire: Without the Massacre of the Lusitanians, Viriathus would have never become a leader and the Iberians would have not been fueled by revenge.

* GoOutWithASmile: Exploited. According to Strabo, many Iberian fighters carried a phial of poison extracted from the plant ''Ranunculus Sardonia'' in order to commit suicide if they were captured. This poison has the particularity of contracting the facial muscles upon dying, which gives the corpse a creepy gaping grin. It naturally scared the shit out of the Romans, who believed the dead were laughing at them from the underworld.
* GradualGrinder: The Roman forces were accustomed to fight large, Napoleonic-style battles in open field where their formations could trample their enemies and deal decisive defeats. The Lusitanians, on the other hand, were skilled in small brawls where the norm was dealing surprise damage and running away only to return later and repeat. Once Viriathus added smart coordination and long-term strategizing, the game was his.
* HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic: TruthInTelevision, as Iberian not always wore helmets, and Viriathus himself was known for not wearing it.

* HitAndRunTactics: Viriathus favored the tactic called ''concursare'' by the Romans: he would order his warriors to charge in a disorganized mass, then stop abruptly before clashing lines with the Roman legions, and then turn their backs and retreat, all while shouting taunts and throwing javelins and sling stones at them. Through this method, which sometimes needed several iterations to make an effect, they got the disciplined Roman infuriated and prone to break formation in the process of chasing them, which eliminated their main advantage and allowed the Iberians to lead them to ambushes in unfavorable terrains.
* HomeBase: Mons Veneris, currently San Vicente Hill in Salamanca, was used by Viriathus as his headquarters at several points of the war.
* HonorBeforeReason: Among the Iberians, dying was thoroughly preferable to being slaved or betraying their chief. When captured, their women used to kill their children with their own hands before taking their own lives. That's why Audax, Minurus and Ditalcus's action was so reviled.
* HopelessWar: There has been a lot of debate about how much of this the war was for the Lusitanian side. Some think that, with Viriathus alive, they might have been able to delay the Roman domination until convincing Rome that Hispania wasn't worthy the effort, just like Arminius did in Germania. However, others believe this would have never happened because Hispania was a much more desirable land due to its comparatively richer resources and warmer climate (hell, Carthago and Rome had been struggling for it for more than one war!). Also, the fact that Viriathus was forced to negotiate with Servilianus instead of simply butchering him reveals the rebels were tired of the war, and thus desperate to call the match off in a position of superiority instead of risking themselves to a new turn of the tide.

* LongRangeFighter: Although the Iberians were great swordsmen, they loved ranged weapons because they allowed them to operate from safe positions in ambushes and skirmishes. Bows, javelins and slings were especially popular.

** "Punicus" comes from "Punic", a Greco-Latin word for "Phoenician" or "Carthaginian". It is believed that he worked as a mercenary for Phoenicians in Southern Spain before becoming a rebel, the name being thus a title in the vein of Scipio Africanus.
** "Caisaros" comes apparently from the Punic word for "elephant" (the same which gave Julius Caesar his surname), meaning a powerful, imposing individual, just as Caisaros apparently was.

* OccupiersOutOfOurCountry: Popular culture has this as Viriathus’s noble goal, but reality is probably much more prosaic, as by this point in history Lusitanians fought mostly for themselves. Revenge aside, their desire to kick the Romans out of the Iberian peninsula was likely because they wanted to be free to sack and pillage through a disorganized Hispania again.

* PowerCopying: The Romans adopted the ''gladius hispaniensis'' from the Iberian mercenaries they fought against during the Punic Wars. Yup, the Roman sword by excellence was actually Iberian.

* RagTagBunchOfMisfits: Unlike Rome, whose legions were formed by professional soldiers trained and organized in camps, the Iberian forces were informal militias drawn from villages and counting on their warrior culture and traditions.

* {{Seppuku}}: Iberian version. Aside from the Iberian custom to commit suicide before becoming slaves, Viriathus's camp celebrated gladiator games to honor his fallen chief during his funeral, and it's said many of them fought to death so they could follow him to afterlife.
* ScreamingWarrior: The Iberians had the custom to bellow war cries before charging, which Romans called ''barritus'' comparing them to roars of beasts.
* ShieldBash: The Iberian round shield, called ''caetra'', was equipped with a large, conical iron boss that served to ram the opponent.

** Viriathus was possibly the first enemy of Rome to realize the structural weaknesses or their legions and capitalized successfully on them. He knew the Iberian warriors couldn't compete directly against the Romans, so he instead worked on the main advantages of his warrior culture, namely their superior mobility, flexibility and adaptation to the environment, which allowed him to throw the legions off their comfort zone and pick them apart.

* SoldierVsWarrior: Roman professional legionaries vs. Iberian warring militiamen.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Imperivm}}'' videogame franchise feature the Lusitanian Wars in its second and third installments, as well as the battle of Numantia in the third.

* Creator/TheHistoryChannel's series ''Series/BarbariansRising'' dedicated a segment to Viriathus and his rebellion.