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Corocotta is a local hero for Cantabrians and his story is passed down orally in Cantabrian families from the elder generations to the younger. According to Roman sources (the only written history of the time), he was a guerrilla warrior or bandit in Cantabria during the 1st century BC, who, according to Cassius Dio, raided Roman territory causing considerable depredation in the area. Dio says that Corocotta's depredations caused Augustus to offer a large reward for his capture. Corocotta himself came forward to receive it, impressing Augustus with his audacity. Dio is the only source for the story.
This decision by Corocotta is viewed by Cantabrians as an act of self-sacrifice and it is believed that his act was intended to avoid any problems that could be created by the reward acting as a temptation for fellow Cantabrians to betray him or turning him in. Instead, Corocotta would take that vast sum of money (or his people would do for him after being killed) and distribute it amongst the people of Cantabria, who had suffered from years of war against the Romans. Such an act of bravery would affect the Roman morale, and the Cantabrians were well known for coming up with very creative and efficient warfare techniques, like singing hymns of victory from the Roman crosses that crucified them or cavalry and infantry moves in which they used the Cantabrian labarum as a flag to signal army manoeuvres, a tactic later copied by the Romans themselves. The story sometimes ends by saying that the Roman Emperor, bemused by Corocotta's bravery, let him go with his life and his money, but this ending is not always clear.
According to Peter Michael Swan the main purpose of the story is to contrast the clemency of Augustus with the vindictiveness of Dio's bête noire, Septimius Severus. Thomas Grünewald says that Dio wished to stress that Augustus had "a strong sense of humour and unshakeable self-confidence", and to compare this with the brutality that was the product of Severus' insecurity, represented by his vicious treatment of a similar "noble bandit" called Bulla Felix.
Adolf Schulten argued in 1943 that the name Corocotta may be only accidentally similar to that of the animal.A. Schulten, Los cántabros y astures y su guerra con Roma, Madrid, 1943 (reed. 1962, 1969, 2000), p. 155 He interpreted it as a Celtic name. *Cor(i)o- was a common element in Continental Celtic personal and place names (perhaps meaning "shot, launch" or "army"; comparing Celtic – or Lusitanian ("Para-Celtic") – personal names such as Corogeni, Coroturetis, Coroneri, Corobulti, Coromarae, Corolamus, Corogennates, et al.)Blanca Maria Prosper, "Sifting the evidence: New interpretations on Celtic and Non–Celtic personal names of western Hispania in the light of phonetics, composition and suffixation", in: J.L. G. Alonso, ed.: Continental Celtic word formation. The onomastic data, Salamanca, eds. Universidad de Salamanca, 2014, pp. 181–200 Leonard Curchin proposes that the second element is from the Celtic root *cotto "old".Curchin, Leonard A. (2007) Toponyms of Lusitânia: a re-assessment of their origins, in: Conimbriga, vol. 46 (2007), p. 129-160.
Schulten argued that he was more likely to have been an anti-Roman rebel than a simple bandit, and should be seen in the context of the Cantabrian wars (29–19 BC), the last stand of independent Spanish Celtic tribes against Roman control. He probably led a band of rebels who continued resistance to Roman power in northern Spain for some time after other leaders had given up. Schulten argues that he must have surrendered to Augustus at some time during the emperor's visit to the area c. 26–25 BC.
In 2007 Alicia M. Canto argued that the text of Dio does not justify placing Corocotta in the context of Cantabrian resistance to Rome. She suggests that Corocotta was merely a bandit, and surmises that he was probably of North African origin on the basis that the crocotta was said by most authors to come from Africa.Alicia. M. Canto, El testamento del cerdito Corocotta, 12 May 2007, Celtiberia.net
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