The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

But, though the history of Portugal possesses its peculiar interest as showing how one small portion of the Iberian peninsula maintained a separate existence, it presents also many features of romantic incident, especially during the epoch when it was for a time the leading nation of Europe. The extraordinary vigour shown by the inhabitants of this small corner of Europe during the latter half of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries is most remarkable. Not only were Portuguese navigators the first to creep down the west coast of Africa in small boats, in which modern sailors would hardly like to cross the English Channel, but they dared to double the Cape of Good Hope, and to sail across the Indian Ocean to India and Ceylon. Thence they ventured round the point of Singapore, and established themselves at Macao, from which centre they explored the coasts of China and Japan. In the other direction, to the west, they crossed the Atlantic and discovered and colonized Brazil. Lisbon became the storehouse and centre of distribution for the products of the East, and attained to a height of wealth and luxury unrivalled since the days of ancient Rome. The history of the Portuguese “conquistadores” in India for the first hundred years after the discovery of the route round the Cape of Good Hope is one long romance; the vastness of their designs, the grandeur of their exploits, and the nobility of character of their great captains, combine to make a story of surpassing interest. And when it is remembered that the soldiers and sailors of these great discoverers and conquerors were inhabitants of the smallest country in Europe, their success seems the more extraordinary, and the interest in the story of the nation which trained the Portuguese heroes becomes the more absorbing. As invariably happens during the heroic age of a nation’s history, literature and the arts flourished at a time distinguished by military and naval prowess, and as Spenser and Shakespeare illustrated the Elizabethan age in England as much as Drake and Raleigh, the age of Vasco da Gama and Alboquerque in Portugal could boast also of Gil Vicente, Sá de Miranda and Camoens. The abrupt fall of Portugal from the greatness and wealth of its heroic period to an insignificant place among the nations is as full of the great lessons which history teaches as the story of its growth. Just as the chivalry induced by the constant fighting with the Moors, and the inspiration to great deeds fostered by freedom and the good government of worthy kings, produced a race of heroes, so not less surely did the growth of luxury and absolutism, assisted by the narrow-mindedness of a dynasty of bigots, lose for Portugal the lofty place which her heroes had won for her. These are things well worth pondering upon and lessons well worth learning, for the great value of the study of history is in teaching such truths as these—truths which are eternal, while nations wax and wane.

The early history of the country, which took the name of Portugal from the county which formed the nucleus of the future kingdom, is identical with that of the rest of the Iberian peninsula, but deserves some slight notice because of an old misconception, immortalized in the title of the famous epic of Camoens, and not yet entirely eradicated even from modern ideas. Portugal, like the rest of the peninsula, was originally inhabited by men of the prehistoric ages, whose implements are frequently dug up at the present day, and remains of the cave-dwellers have been found all over the province of the Alemtejo, and more especially in the great cave near Alter do Chão. The most famous prehistoric monument is, however, the beautiful “Anta de Guimaraens,” about the exact date of which Portuguese archæologists are much exercised. These prehistoric people were conquered and exterminated by the first waves of the great Aryan race which has spread all over Europe. There seems to be no doubt that the Celts, the first Aryan immigrants, were preceded by a non-Aryan race, which is called by different writers the Iberian or the Euskaldunac nation, but this earlier race speedily amalgamated with the Celts, and out of the two together were formed the five tribes inhabiting the Iberian peninsula, which Strabo names as the Cantabrians, the Vasconians, the Asturians, the Gallicians, and the Lusitanians. It is Strabo, also, who mentions the existence of Greek colonies at the mouths of the Tagus, Douro, and Minho, and it is curious to note that the old name of Lisbon, Olisipo, was from the earliest times identified with that of the hero of the Odyssey, and was interpreted to mean the city of Ulysses. The Celtic Iberians certainly possessed the elements of civilization, and from a very early period they had learnt to write, and it is a remarkable fact that the formation of the letters of their alphabet is traceable rather to Greek than Phœnician characters. This is the more remarkable, when it is remembered that the Phœnicians, and not the Greeks, are always mentioned in history as monopolizing the trade of Iberia. The Carthaginians, though they had colonies all over the peninsula, established their rule mainly over the south and east of it, having their capital at Carthagena or Nova Carthago, and seem to have neglected the more barbarous northern and western provinces.

It was for this reason that the Romans found far more difficulty in subduing these latter provinces than they had in taking possession of the former, which the Carthaginians had already conquered. The Romans were at first satisfied with these provinces, which were ceded to them after the conclusion of the second Punic war, but eventually they began to spread over the hitherto neglected districts; and in 189 B.C. Lucius Æmilius Paullus defeated the Lusitanians, and in 185 B.C. Gaius Calpurnius forced his way across the Tagus. There is no need here to discuss the gradual conquest by the Romans of that part of the peninsula which includes the modern kingdom of Portugal, but it is necessary to speak of the gallant shepherd Viriathus, who sustained a stubborn war against the Romans from 149 B.C. until he was assassinated in 139 B.C. because he has been generally claimed as the first national hero of Portugal. This claim has been based upon the assumed identification of the modern Portugal with the ancient Lusitania, an identification which has spread its roots deep into Portuguese literature, and has until recently been generally accepted.

The first Portuguese writer who assumed the identity of Portugal with Lusitania was Dom Garcia de Meneses, Bishop of Evora, who wrote in the reign of John II. at the close of the fifteenth century, though the two terms had been used distinctively by early chroniclers, such as Lucas de Tuy in his “Chronicon Mundi,” and Matthew de Pisano in his “Guerra de Ceuta.” The mistaken notion was further developed in the days of the Renaissance and of the Revival of Learning, and became generally accepted by the close of the sixteenth century, and exaggerated by the very title of such books as the “Monarchia Lusitana” of Bernardo de Brito and the “De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniæ” of the great antiquary Andrea de Resende. In fact, the Portuguese writers of that epoch delighted in calling Portugal by the classical name of Lusitania, and Camoens, the very greatest of them all, has, by the title of his famous epic, “Os Lusiadas” or “The Lusiads,” stamped the mistake permanently on Portuguese literature.

This false identification has had important historical consequences. Modern writers have on this supposition spoken of the Portuguese as a distinct branch of the Celtic population of the Iberian peninsula identical with the tribe of Lusitanians spoken of by Strabo. They have further identified them with the Lusitanians who struggled so gallantly against the Roman Republic under the leadership of Punicus and Viriathus; they have found passages in the Latin historians describing the Lusitanians, and have moralized upon the manner in which the characteristics of the ancient Lusitanians re-appear in the modern Portuguese. The identity of two nations must consist in proving their perfect succession in either race or territory, and in neither respect can the identity be shown in the present instance. The Celtic tribe of Lusitanians dwelt, according to Strabo, in the districts north of the Tagus, while the Lusitania of the Latin historians of the Republic undoubtedly lay to the south of that river though it was not used as the name of a province until the time of Augustus, when the old division of the peninsula into Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior was superseded by the division into Betica, Tarraconensis, and Lusitania. Neither in this division, nor in the division of the peninsula into the five provinces of Tarraconensis, Carthaginensis, Betica, Lusitania, and Gallicia, under Hadrian, was the province called Lusitania coterminous with the modern kingdom of Portugal. Under each division the name was given to a district south of the Tagus, and therefore not embracing the modern provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro, Trasos-Montes, and Beira.

It is important to grasp the results of this misconception, for it emphasizes the fact that the history of Portugal for many centuries is merged in that of the rest of the Iberian peninsula, and explains why it is unnecessary to study the wars of the Lusitanians with the Roman Republic, as is often done in histories of Portugal. Like the rest of the peninsula Portugal was thoroughly Latinized in the days of the Roman Empire; Roman coloniæ and municipia were established in places suited for trade, such as Lisbon and Oporto, and commanding high-roads, such as Lamego and Viseu; Roman institutions were generally adopted, and the Latin language superseded the old Celtic dialects. The chief Portuguese towns, like those in the rest of the peninsula, were granted the “Jus Latinum” by Vespasian, and all the inhabitants became Roman citizens under the famous decree of Caracalla. The influence of the mighty sway of Rome has left its traces all over the peninsula, and to as great degree in Portugal as in Spain. Portuguese law is based on the old Roman law, as well as the Portuguese language upon Latin; and many Portuguese institutions show the direct influence of Roman government. Notably is this the case with regard to municipal institutions; many Portuguese cities can boast of distinct existence ever since the Roman Empire, and the duumviri and boni homines of those days have their counterparts in the municipal government of the present day. During these days of peace and prosperity Portugal also received the Christian religion, and welcomed it as cordially as France and Spain, and bishoprics were founded which still exist. In more material things the dominion of Rome has left its traces in the roads and bridges made by that race of engineers, in the beautiful remains at Leiria, and in the aqueduct and the ruins of the temple of Diana at Evora.

Peaceful existence under the sway of Rome continued until the beginning of the fifth century, when the Goths first forced their way across the Pyrenees. During the first barbarian occupation, the Suevi seized Gallicia and Tarraconensis, the Alans Lusitania and Carthaginensis, and the Vandals Betica or Andalusia. The irruption of the Visigoths changed this settlement; the Alans and the Vandals crossed to Africa, and the Suevi occupied Betica and Lusitania. The Visigothic Empire left but slight traces in Portugal, slighter even than in Spain, and the Portuguese nobility do not, like the Spanish, invariably lay claim to Gothic descent. Ethnologically the Gothic element is very slight in Portugal, though the country passed under the rule of the Visigoths during the reign of Ataulphus, who married the sister of the Roman Emperor Honorius, and remained part of their dominion for three centuries. While the Roman rule left so many traces of its existence, and entirely modelled the language and civilization alike of Spain and Portugal, that of the Visigoths, which lasted nearly as long, left hardly any traces at all. The cause is to be found in the natural assimilation of a race in a low state of civilization to the status of a higher race. The number of Romans who actually settled in the peninsula must have been very small, yet the Celts adopted their language and civilization, while the conquering Visigoths, on the other hand, adopted the religion and civilization of the people they had conquered. The Visigothic power reached its zenith in the reign of Euric at the end of the fifth century, and afterwards steadily declined, being torn by internal dissensions, and especially by the great struggle between the nobility and the rulers of the Christian Church. It was the leaders of the latter party, Count Julian and Archbishop Oppus, who invited the Mohammedans from Africa into Spain, and in fighting against them, Roderick, the last Visigothic king, was killed near Xeres, at the battle of the Guadelete, in 711.

The history of the Mohammedans in the Iberian peninsula has been treated in another volume of this Series,[1] and it is only necessary to note here that under the wise and tolerant rule of the Ommeyad sultans, the rich plains alike of Spain and Portugal maintained the prosperity which they had enjoyed under the Roman emperors and the Visigothic kings, and that the old Roman coloniæ and municipia retained their Roman self-government, and Lisbon and Oporto increased in wealth and commercial importance. Though the Arabs were fanatical conquerors, the Ommeyads were enlightened rulers, and the Christian religion was protected, though not encouraged, as long as the Christian bishops refrained from active exertions against the Mohammedans. In Portugal also, owing to its distance from Cordova, the duties of government were granted almost entirely to the Mosarabs, as the numerous native converts to Islam were called, men who felt the importance of keeping the adherents of the two prevailing religions from coming to blows.