The Cantabri (Ancient Greek: Καντάβροι, Kantabroi) or Ancient Cantabrians were a group of people and a large collection of tribes that lived in the northern coastal area of ancient Iberia during the second half of the first millennium BC. These people and their lands were added to the Roman Province of Hispania Tarraconensis in 19 BC after the Cantabrian Wars.

Name

Cantabri is a name that was changed to Latin. It probably means "Highlanders" and comes from an ancient word in Ancient Ligurian that meant "mountain." During the Middle Ages and the time after, the name usually referred to the Basques.

Geography

Cantabria, the land of the Cantabri, originally included much of the mountainous areas along the northern Spanish Atlantic coast. This area covered the entire modern Cantabria province, parts of eastern Asturias, nearby mountainous regions in Castile and León, the northern part of the province of Palencia, the province of Burgos, and the northeast part of the province of León. After the Roman conquest, the area became much smaller, including only Cantabria and eastern Asturias.

History

The ancestors of the Cantabri were believed by the Romans to have moved to the Iberian Peninsula around the 4th Century BC. The Romans described them as more mixed in background compared to other Celtic groups in the region. By the 1st century BC, the Cantabri were organized into about eleven tribes, including the Avarigines, Blendii, Camarici, Concani, Coniaci, Morecani, Noegi, Orgenomesci, Plentuisii, Salaeni, Vadinienses, and Vellici. These tribes formed a group with a shared identity, and their capital was the town of Aracillum, located in the strategic Besaya River valley. Other important Cantabrian hillforts included Villeca/Vellica, Bergida, and Amaya/Amaia.

A study of ancient place names in Cantabria shows a strong Celtic influence, along with a similar presence of "Para-Celtic" languages, both belonging to the Indo-European family. This evidence suggests there were not many people from earlier groups or the Basque people in the region. This supports the idea that the Celtic people who settled in the Iberian Peninsula arrived from an area between Brittany and the mouth of the Garonne River, eventually settling along the Galician and Cantabrian coasts.

The Cantabri were known for their fierce independence and resistance to Roman rule. They were seen as tough warriors, often hired as mercenaries but also known for banditry. Early records from historians like Livy and Polybius mention Cantabrian soldiers fighting for Carthage in the late 3rd century BC. During the 2nd Punic War, some Cantabrians joined Hannibal’s army, while others fought for Mago in Celtiberia. In 207 BC, Cantabrian warriors fought alongside the Astures at the Battle of the Metaurus and later supported the Vaccaei and Celtiberians in conflicts. According to Cornelius Nepos, the Cantabri first surrendered to Rome after Cato the Elder’s campaigns in 195 BC. Their reputation was so strong that in 137 BC, a rumor of a Cantabri-Vaccaei relief force caused a Roman army to surrender after being overwhelmed by fear.

In the early 1st century BC, the Cantabri sometimes fought for Roman generals while also supporting rebellions in Roman provinces and raiding during times of unrest. They initially supported Quintus Sertorius during the Sertorian Wars but later switched sides to Pompey. During the Gallic Wars, the Cantabri sent an army to help the Aquitani against the Romans but were defeated by Julius Caesar’s forces in 56 BC.

Under the leader Corocotta, the Cantabri attacked neighboring tribes like the Vaccaei and Autrigones, which led to the First Cantabrian War in 29 BC. Emperor Augustus conquered and partially destroyed the Cantabri, incorporating their lands into the Transduriana Province. However, harsh Roman rule led to ongoing uprisings, including a slave revolt in 20 BC. By the early 1st century AD, the region gained some local self-rule as part of the Hispania Tarraconensis province.

Although the Romans built colonies and military bases in Cantabria, the local people retained many aspects of their Celtic language, religion, and culture. The Cantabri also provided soldiers to the Roman army, serving in infantry and cavalry units. These troops fought in Emperor Claudius’s invasion of Britain between AD 43 and 60.

During the Migration Period of the late 4th century, the Cantabri reappeared alongside their neighbors, the Astures. They were later Christianized and faced violence from the Visigoths in the 6th century. The Cantabri were still mentioned in the 7th century during Visigoth conflicts with the Vascones. Their language and culture fully shifted to Latin only after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century.

Culture

According to Pliny the Elder, Cantabria had gold, silver, tin, lead, and iron mines, as well as deposits of magnetite and amber. However, not much is known about these resources. Strabo also wrote about salt being mined in areas like Cabezón de la Sal. He described a tradition after childbirth in which the mother would stand up, and the father would lie down, with the mother caring for him.

Religion

Literary and written records show that the Cantabri, like their Gallaeci and Astures neighbors, practiced polytheism. They worshipped many male and female gods from the Indo-European tradition in sacred oak or pine forests, mountains, rivers, and small rural shrines.

Druidism was not practiced by the Cantabri. However, evidence suggests that they had an organized group of priests who performed complex ceremonies. These included ritual steam baths, festive dances, oracles, divination, and sacrifices of humans and animals. Strabo wrote that people in the north-west region sacrificed horses to an unnamed God of War. Horace and Silius Italicus noted that the Concani people had a tradition of drinking horse blood during their ceremonies.

Language

Leonard A. Curchin studied the place names from ancient Cantabria and found that most of them come from Celtic and other Indo-European languages. This suggests that the people living there spoke the Celtic language, which was commonly used in Iberia during that time, rather than a Pre-Indo-European or Basque language as some had thought. His research also indicates that the influence of the Romans in the region was limited.