The locality of Teba is most faithfully described by that author; indeed I know no one who has given so graphic an account of this part of Spain generally.
The ascent to the town on this (the northern) side, is yet more difficult than that in the opposite direction; but the place will amply repay the labour of a visit, for the view from it is extremely fine, and the extensive ruins of its ancient defences, evidently of Roman workmanship, are well worthy of observation.
The position of Teba, with reference to other places in the neighbourhood, and to the circumjacent country, is so inaccurately given in all maps which I have seen, that the antiquaries seem quite to have overlooked it as the probable site of Ategua, so celebrated for its obstinate defence against Julius Cæsar.
Morales—without the slightest grounds, as far as the description of the country accords with the assumption—imagined Ategua to have stood where he maintains some ruins, “called by the country-people Teba la Vieja,” are to be seen between Castrò el Rio and Codoba; but, as I pointed out in the case of Ronda, and Ronda la Vieja, it is absurd to suppose that an old Teba could ever have existed, since Teba itself is a Roman town, and its present name a mere corruption of that which it bore in times past.
Other Spanish authors place Ategua at Castro el Rio, some at Baena, some elsewhere; but almost all appear anxious to fix its site near the river Guadajoz, which they have determined, in their own minds, must be the Salsus mentioned by Hirtius.
La Martinière, with his usual inaccuracy, says, that the Guadajoz falls into the Salado: he should rather have said, that it is formed from the confluence of various salados; for, as I have elsewhere observed, salado is a general term for all water-courses, and not the name of a river.[122]
It seems, however, probable, that the Romans gave the name Salsus to some river impregnated with salt, which many streams in this part of Spain are; and since there is an extensive salt-lake still existing near Alcaudete, on the very margin of the Guadajoz, that river has hastily been concluded to be that of the Roman historian. But, it appears strange, if the Guadajoz be the Salsus of Hirtius, that Pliny, when describing the course of the Bœtis, and the principal streams which fell into it, should have omitted to mention that river, as being one of its affluents; for the Salsus, from the recentness of the war between Cæsar and the sons of Pompey, must have been much spoken of in Pliny’s time.
But what, to me, proves most satisfactorily that the Guadajoz is not the Salsus, is, that it so ill agrees with the minute description given of the river by Hirtius himself;—for, in speaking of the Salsus he says,[123] “It runs through the plains, and divides them from the mountains, which all lie upon the side of Ategua, at about two miles’ distance from the river;” and again, “But what proved principally favourable to Pompey’s design of drawing out the war, was the nature of the country, (i. e. about Ategua) full of mountains, and extremely well adapted to encampments;”[124] and, from what again follows, it is evident that Ategua stood upon the summit of a mountain.
Now the Guadajoz nowhere runs so as to divide the plains from the mountains. It issues from the mountains of Alcalà Real, many miles before reaching Castrò el Rio, and between that last-named town and Cordoba, there is no ground that can be called mountainous.