The famous archbishop, Don Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, rejects all these theories, and goes to Rome in search of founders, which he discovers in two consuls, Tolemon and Brutus, 108 years before Cæsar’s time, when Ptolemy Evergetes was reigning. But this seems no nearer truth, since there exists no vestige of any domination anterior to the Roman Conquest, and there are no data on which to found a definite statement. The most convenient way of disposing of the question, up to the day of Livy’s emphatic description of Toledo as “parva urbs, sed loco munita,” is to say with the old-fashioned writers that its beginning is “lost in the night of ages.” For lost it most certainly is, and the ancient Spanish historians are not to be trusted. It is probable that the first start of the race was a Celtic group of shepherds, wild and rude, whose wanderings led them to the leafy and verdant banks of the Tagus, and here, finding abundance of water, and rich and fertile land between Aranjuez and Toledo, they agreed to settle. Gradually the little town, pitched high above the river upon its unattackable rocky seat, spread itself; the number of huts grew into streets and lanes, the vague and wandering groups became more dense, and attracted others within their dominating influence, until the capital of Carpetania was formed. The shepherds left their flocks to build themselves walls and strong places, and thus bring upon their little city the imperious and conquering eye of Rome. Here again we have nothing but untrustworthy generalities to guide us, and no prehistoric remains on which to base conclusions about this vanished race. Alcocer, the old historian of Toledo, asserts that the very mystery and obscurity of the city’s earliest days is proof of its antiquity and nobility, “since a race is all the more ancient by the less that is known of its origin and beginning.” In a pleasing concession to this naïve statement, we need feel no shame in allowing to Toledo all the nobility and antiquity our unenlightened ignorance permits it to claim.
The first dim figure in its history that shows out upon a vague and discutable background is that of Tago, a governor of the town in the days of Carthagenian domination. Before the second punic war, the Carthagenians sought to strengthen their forces by alliance with the Carpetanians, whom they had already partially subjugated. According to Rasis, the Moorish writer, there were then eleven governors in Carpetania, one of whom was Tago, at Toledo. Hasdrubal had succeeded Hamilcar, and reversing his mild policy, entertained his fancy with every kind of ferocious injustice and cruelty. The Carpetanians were handy, half allies, half conquered subjects, and the account of Tago’s assassination, for Hasdrubal’s mere pleasure, is one of unmitigable barbarity, one of those incidents that leave us stunned and stupefied by the revelation of an inexplicable instinct of cruelty in uncivilised man. Not content with repeatedly stabbing the unfortunate governor with his own hand, Hasdrubal ordered the body to be crucified, then drew his sword across the throat, severing the head, exposed the headless trunk, and forbade it decent burial. One of Tago’s slaves revenged his master by assassinating Hasdrubal, and the infuriated Carpetanians rose up in revolt against Carthagenian oppression. They joined neighbouring tribes, and determined to resist Hannibal. Hannibal marched against them, and met them near ancient Oresia, eight leagues from Toledo, and here a long and fierce battle was fought, equal on both sides in losses, endurance, courage and fury. Night fell before either side had obtained the slightest advantage, and when day came, the confederates had the wild joy of forcing the world’s greatest general to retreat. This obscure and miserable little people, a handful of raw Celtiberians, had no means of measuring the extent of their forgotten glory. Hannibal to them was no more than Hasdrubal, and they little suspected the kind of hero they had to do with. So they feasted and shouted and sang in their rash triumph, while Hannibal, who had folded his tent before their impetuous charge, grimly looked on, and planned to take advantage of their unbuckled hour. In the midst of their feasting and pleasuring, he bore down unexpectedly upon the victors, and all the confederates, struck at their brightest moment in the full flush of pride, were broken on the remorseless wheel of Carthagenian rule.
From this onward, light begins to gather over Toledan history, dimly, of course, and by the very necessity of its vicissitudes, intermittent and dubious. After the fall of Carthage, we find, 191 years B.C., Marcus Fulvius Nobilior directing the Roman forces against the capital of Carpetania, and as besieger occupying the opposite bank of the Tagus. The reigning king of the Celtiberians was Hilermo. Fulvius defeated him in the plain, and then laid siege to the town and took it with ease. But though now subject to Rome, the Romans never appear to have dominated this stolid and sturdy Celtic race. Under whatever sway, Toledo ever wears its unwearying face of sullen independence. Rome itself could stamp no permanent impression on such a wilful and indomitable subject. Her armies might sweep it off the field of rebellion, but could neither chain it nor secure its sympathy. It remained obstinately neutral in all the successive Roman strifes; took no notice whatever of Viriate’s imperious call from the foot of its walls to join him on the bank of the Tagus below, and wage war with him against the Praetor, Caius Plancius. What was Viriate to the aloof and self-centred Toledans more than a man of another country fighting a personal battle with which they had no concern? Toledo willingly opened its gates to Sylla’s victim, Sertorius, and allowed him to shelter and nourish his hate and burning sense of injury behind its walls, but it flatly declined to help him in his plan of vengeance. He might stay there and win, as he did, the people’s esteem and a kind of grudging affection, but war was his own affair, and if he stayed it should be as one of themselves, content with an inactive recognition of wrongs. To these wild and independent Celtiberians it mattered nothing whether Rome ran herself to ruin in her fierce quarrels and dissensions. So Sertorius stayed on in protected exile, almost as a ruler adopted by those who sheltered him, who yielded him admiration and sympathy, while sturdily declining to grant him troops or subsidies, and would not hear of marching under his leadership against the great Republic. This same haughty indifference Toledo maintained throughout the civil wars between Cæsar and Pompey, and showed the same coldness in the fortunes of Augustus. Her voice was not heard in the chorus of enthusiasm when the Temple of Janus was closed, and the Augustan peace affected her as little as had the previous disorders and rivalries and battles. Silent and sullen vassals Rome ever found these Toledans, holding themselves persistently aloof from all her interests. The single Roman ruler they appear to have favoured with some measure of homage was Marcus Julius Philippicus, who, to win his way with them probably granted them unrecorded favours or some special privilege. This rare mood of gratitude to Rome was expressed on a marble slab which Maestro Alvar Gomez, the chronicler of Cisneros, the great Cardinal, found in the porch of a door where it served as an ordinary seat:
Imp. Caes.
M. Julio Philippo
Pio Fel. Aug.
Pont. Max. Trib.
Pot. P. P. Consul.
Toletam Devotes
Sini Nuninis
Maestati
Que Eius D. D.
The gratitude was apparently of modified value if we may judge by the unceremonious treatment of its monument.
Though Toledo must have had a distinct existence under the Romans, since Pliny calls it the Metropolis of Carpetania, there is not to be found definite evidence of the precise nature of that existence. The few coins that have come down to us in various collections, said to belong to that period, are of dubious origin; the inscriptions are not a whit more authentic. So little is clear or authentic that Alcover may continue to delight in the mystery and obscurity of its history as proof, according to his cherished phrase, of the town’s antiquity and nobility. We are hardly justified in supposing anything, and imagination is barely assisted in its effort to penetrate its inhospitable walls. For we know that there were walls in those days, since Viriate is depicted standing under them, and calling on the citizens to join his forces below and march behind the standard of civil war. It is pretty certain that the town was extensive and populous, or Viriate would not have troubled to clamour for its assistance; and assuredly of some importance, else would Pliny have described it as the Capital of Carpetania? But what was the measure and nature of its civilisation, of its customs, dress? Did it adopt any of the Roman ways? We may assume from its rude and central position that in progress it was far behind the Mediterranean towns. But it undoubtedly had its place along the great Roman roads, and was connected with Tarragona and Carthagena, of which superior and more notable centres it was a dependency. While Tarragona has remained to this day pre-eminently an old Roman town, the very physiognomy of the race a kind of diminished Roman, and Cordova and Granada are as romantically and faithfully Moorish, Toledo has swept from off its face nearly every vestige of Roman domination but a few miserable stones, and is as insistently Gothic. So obscure and unrevealed is this period of transition that beyond the indication of the Circo Romano and portion of the Puente de Alcántara outside the town, there are no remains to prove the passage of the world’s conquerors and civilisers, nothing to suggest their imperishable influence. Of its position under Roman rule it is difficult to form an exact opinion. Its rank at first was probably that of a stipendary town, left to the despotic will of centurions without a responsible governor. It was merely regarded as an insignificant source of tribute. In this period of partial servitude it would have contracted the habit of idleness, the most prominent curse of slavery. Later on it was raised to municipal rank, had its own coin and commerce, and developed a racial preference for the arts of war rather than for those of peace. Finally, when Augustus came to reign, he raised Toledo to the rank of a colony, and transmitted to the town the privileges of Merida, making the Carpetanian capital the centre for the collection of tribute. But whatever difference these honours may have made in the town’s private history, whatever amount of added prosperity they may have brought it, we are not permitted by the historians to obtain a clearer or more striking figure of Toledo as a colony of Rome than we had of Toledo in its first stage of stipendary town. Here and there an inscription exists as testimony of her advanced rank, such as.
L. Terentius
Gn. pomp. F. P. P.
Bassino
Totelano Quaestori
Q. Q. Redidili
Primo Flamini perpetuo Toleti
Et Totius Hispanae
Quod hic Termas et viam.
Of the baths and the Roman way nothing now remains. Cristobal Lozano, in his Reyes Nueves de Toledo, devotes a chapter to the Roman glories of the town, speaks of the Circo Maximo, the temple of Hercules, the Naumachia and amphitheatre, and tells us that the bullfights of Spain date from this period. The temple he describes as being 300 feet in length and 200 feet in width; it was situated in the Vega, and was an object of devotion to the entire province of Carpetania. The celebrated cave of Hercules into which Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic kings, is supposed to have penetrated before the fatal battle of Guadalete, Lozano describes at greater length. The cave is as legendary as Rodrigo’s sombre experience therein. It covered the prodigious extent of three leagues, and was composed of thousands of arches, pillars and columns. It was said to have been used as a secret treasury, but was built by Hercules as a royal subterranean palace, and here in prehistoric days the arts of magic were studied. The Romans enlarged it, and during the persecutions it served the Christians as church and oratory and cemetery. Part of it lay under the spell of enchantment by the order of Hercules, and when Spain was flooded with barbarians, and the Goths swept the classic Romans out of Toledo, Hercules hermetically sealed the doors, and tradition asserted that whoever should succeed in bursting open these doors would learn his doom and wed calamity. No Gothic king, until Rodrigo, was strong-minded enough to risk such dreadful peril, and the doors remained sealed. But the unfortunate Rodrigo was as brave as he was curious. He burst through the magic doorway, on which was written in Greek letters: The King who opens this cave and discovers the wonders it holds, will discover good and evil. Those who preceded him into the mysterious palace speedily fell back in a state of shuddering alarm and fear, shouting that they had seen an awful vision. Instead of staying to learn the nature of the vision, Rodrigo, angry and impatient, pushed his way in before his cowardly followers. He encountered an immense bronze statue in a beautiful frame work, highly sculptured. It held a wooden hammer, and struck fierce blows with it against the earth, thus moving the air and causing a terrible noise which bewildered and frightened Rodrigo’s courtiers. It stopped its movements as Rodrigo approached, and on the wall of a closed arch beside it was written: Whoever opens this arch will find wonders. The King ordered his men to break open a passage, and instead of the treasures he expected to find, there was a picture of Arabian troops, some afoot, some on horseback, turbaned and armed, and underneath written: Whoever reaches this spot and opens this arch, will lose Spain, and will be beaten by this race. “The King,” writes Lozano, “with sorrow in his heart and such sadness as we can understand, though carefully hiding it, ordered the door to be closed again.” All those present also dissimulated their feelings, not to increase the affliction of the King. And while they went about seeking if among so many misfortunes they might find some consolation, lifting their eyes, they saw on the wall, on the left hand of the statue, other lines of writing: Sorry King for thy doom hast thou entered here. And on the right lines saying: For foreign nations wilt thou be dispossessed, and thy people will be heavily punished. Behind the statue they read: I call upon the Moors, and on its breast was written: I fulfil my task. That same night in the roar of many voices and loud battle cries, the earth opened and swallowed up in a clap of thunder the enchanted palace and every vestige of it. The legend is an excellent one, and has well served the poets, but unhappily it is only a legend of no historic value whatever. Rodrigo no more penetrated this mythical cave than he kissed Florinda, who never existed. Cardinal Siliceo is said to have explored what remained of the part without the vanished enchanted part of the palace, and after penetrating half a league inward, found bronze statues on the altar; and while examining one of them, the statue fixed him with a grave and austere glance, while a loud noise was heard, which filled the explorers with terror, and Lozano naïvely suggests that nothing of the sort possibly happened, for fear is a great inventor, and “they were filled with fear to the eyes.” They fled without King Rodrigo’s courage to go further. Though it was summer time, most of them died immediately afterwards from cold and fright, and the “good” archbishop, who had caused this devastation among his flock, ordered the mouth of the cave to be built up and covered with mud, 1543. Antonio Ponz, commenting on this prodigious and serious account given by Lozano of a fabulous cave and an impossible tale, makes merry over the naïve Spaniard’s accuracy of description and facts. “One would really believe he had seen it all,” writes the unenthusiastic Ponz, “the statue, the bronze, the admirable sculpture, and had measured the extent of the cave.” The same may be said of Lozano’s grandiose description of the Roman buildings of which hardly a vestige remained in his time, 1666. The Circo Maximo, Gamero asserts, was built to hold a hundred thousand persons, from which we might infer that Toledo under the Romans had an important population.
Approaching less apocryphal days, we learn that Toledo was one of the earliest towns of Spain to embrace Christianity. It is even said that St Peter and St James passed here, and some add St Paul, preaching the Gospel and creating bishops. St Eugenius, of Greek or Roman origin, was the first. The Spanish historians decline to accept the tradition that St Denis of Paris sent Eugenius to Spain, preferring to keep him in company with the Apostles. But it allows that he went to Paris to see St Denis, and here was martyred near the city by the prefect, Fescenino Sicino, his headless body being flung into a filthy lagoon so that his disciples and admirers should never be able to find it. Two hundred years later the lake gave up its dead, uncorrupted. One Ercoldo, being ill, saw St Denis in sleep, who told him to rise cured, and go to the lake, where he would find the body of the illustrious martyr awaiting burial. At the same time he promised for the sake of Eugenius, great health to the neighbourhood and the honour of many miracles. Pisa records this tale at some length with unction and faith. Several centuries later the emperor, Alfonso VII., grandson of the victor of Toledo, obtained from his son-in-law, Louis of France, the right arm of Eugenius as a relic, and the arm was brought to Spain in all pomp by the Abbot of St Denis in person. Later, Philip II. obtained the entire body from Charles IX., with the consent of the Cardinal, Duke of Lorrain, Abbot of St Denis. The town prepared a magnificent reception for the remains of the founder of its cathedral. Antonio de Rivera, the choir-master, gives a detailed description of the triumphal arches, the Latin and Castillian poems, the dances and other diversions of the hour. The King was present as well as his unfortunate son, Don Carlos, the princes of Hungary and Bohemia, Rodolpho and Hernesto, sons of Maximilian, the bishops of Cordova, Siguenza, Segovia, Palencia, Cuenca, Osuna, Lugo and Gerona. Francisco Bayeu painted a fine fresco of the scene for the cathedral cloisters, representing the entrance of the remains under the Puerta de Visagra.
The next saint connected with the Christian history of the town, and its real patron, is St Leocadia. She was of noble birth, beautiful, young and gifted. She is depicted a kind of Spanish St Elisabeth of Hungary, succouring the poor and sick, speaking words of wisdom to the weak, of sympathy to the suffering. Her father, Leocadio, was governor under Dacian, and her uncle was Melancius the archbishop. While yet a child she vowed herself to maidenhood and the service of the needy and those in trouble, and her doors like her compassionate heart were open to all. On his arrival at Toledo, Dacian heard of the wonderful maid, and learnt that her influence spread far and wide. He ordered her to appear before him, and she came surrounded by friends and admirers. The Roman in the interview is painted as brutal and inexorable, the girl-saint as mild but firm. She would change neither her faith nor her ways, and valiantly announced herself as ready for death. We hear of flagellations, of chains, of torture, of every form of explosion of Roman fury, till finally unable to invent further atrocities, Dacian flung her into a dark dungeon, where she died a natural death, some assert, others preferring the more ghastly version of Dacian in person ordering her to be flung down a steep rock into the Tagus. But this, I imagine, has been tacked on to the legend as a more picturesque conclusion for a martyr than a natural death in a prison. Gamero does not endorse it, and his history is admitted to be the most accurate of any that deals with Toledo.