The Turdetani were an ancient pre-Roman people of the Iberian Peninsula, living in the valley of the Guadalquivir (the river that the Turdetani called by two names: Kertis and Rérkēs (Ῥέρκης) and which was later known to the Ancient Rome as Baetis),
History
The Turdetani were in constant contact with their
Greek people and
Carthaginians neighbors.
Herodotus describes them as enjoying a civilized rule under a king,
Arganthonios, who welcomed Phocaean colonists in the fifth century BC. The Turdetani are said to have possessed a written legal code and to have employed
Iberians mercenaries to carry on their wars against Rome.
[Livy, Ab Urbe Condita Libri, 34, 19.] Strabo notes that the Turdetani were the most civilized people in Iberia, with the implication that their ordered, urbanized culture was most in accord with Greco-Roman models. After the end of the Second Punic War, the Turdetani rose against their Roman governor in 197 BC. When Cato the Elder became consul in 195 BC, he was given the command of the whole of
Hispania. Cato first put down the rebellion in the northeast, then marched south and put down the revolt by the Turdetani, "the least warlike of all the Hispanic tribes".
[Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita Libri, 34, 17.] Cato was able to return to Rome in 194, leaving two
in charge of the two provinces.
In Plautus' comedy Captivi, a reference to the Turdetani (Act i, Scene ii) amusingly purports to show that their district in Hispania Baetica had become proverbially famous for the thrushes and other small birds which it supplied to Roman tables ( Turdus being the thrush genus).
See also
Notes
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Ángel Montenegro et alii, Historia de España 2 - colonizaciones y formación de los pueblos prerromanos (1200-218 a.C), Editorial Gredos, Madrid (1989)
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