The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies

by R. G. Latham

Gibraltar.—This isolated possession serves as a text for the ethnology of Spain; and there is no country wherein the investigation is more difficult.

It is difficult, if we look at the analysis of the present population, and attempt to ascertain the proportion of its different ingredients. There is Moorish blood, and there is Gothic, Roman, and Phœnician; some little Greek, and, older than any, the primitive and original Iberic. Perhaps, too, there is a Celtic element,—at least such is the inference from the term Celtiberian. Yet it is doubtful whether it be a true one; and, even if it be, there still stands over the question whether the Celtic or the Iberic element be the older.

When this is settled, the hardest problem of all remains behind; viz., the ethnological position of the Iberians. What they were, in themselves, we partially know from history; and what their descendants are we know also from their language. But we only know them as an isolated branch of the human species. Their relation to[19] the neighbouring families is a mystery. Reasons may be given for connecting them with the Celts of Gaul; reasons for connecting them with the Africans of the other side of the Straits; and reasons for connecting them with tribes and families so distant in place, and so different in manners as the Finns of Finland, and the Laps of Lapland. Nay more,—affinities have been found between their language and the Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac; between it and the Georgian; between it and half the tongues of the Old World. Even in the forms of speech of America, analogies have been either found or fancied.

Be this, however, as it may, the oldest inhabitants of the Spanish peninsula were the different tribes of the Iberians proper, and the Celtiberians; the first being the most easily disposed of. They it was, whose country was partially colonized by Phœnician colonists; either directly from Tyre and Sidon, or indirectly from Carthage. They it was who, at a somewhat later period, came in contact with the Greeks of Marseilles and their own town of Emporia. They it was who could not fail to receive some intermixture of African blood; whether it were from Africans crossing over on their own account, or from the Libyans, Gætulians, and Mauritanians of the Carthaginian levies.

And now the great western peninsula becomes[20] the battle-ground for Rome and Carthage; the theatre of the Scipios on the one side, and the great family of the Barcas on the other. On Iberian ground does Hannibal swear his deadly and undying enmity to Rome. At this time, the numerous primitive tribes of Spain may boast a civilization equal to that of the most favoured spots of the earth,—Greece, and the parts between the Nile, the Euphrates and the Mediterranean alone being excepted. As tested by their agricultural mode of life, their commercial and mining industry, their susceptibility of discipline as soldiers, and, above all, by the size and number of their cities, the Iberian of Spain is on the same level with the Celt of Gaul, and the Celt of Gaul on that of the Italian of Italy,—i.e., as far as the civilization of the latter is his own, and not of Greek origin. But this is a point of European rather than Spanish ethnology.

That the obstinate spirit of resistance to organized armies by means of a guerilla warfare, the savage patriotism which suggests such expressions as war even to the knife, and the endurance behind stone walls, which characterizes the modern Spaniards, is foreshadowed in the times of their earliest history, has often been remarked, and that truly. Numantia is an early Saragossa, Saragossa a modern Numantia. Viriathus has had innumerable counterparts. Where the indomitable[21] Cantabrian held out against the power of Rome, the Biscayan of the year 1851 adheres to his privileges and his language; and what the Cantabrian was to the Roman, the Asturian was to the Moor. Both trusted their freedom to their impracticable mountains and stubborn spirits—and kept it accordingly. It is an easy matter to refer the peculiarities of the Spanish character to the infusion of Oriental blood; and with some of them it may be the case. But with many of them, the reference is a false one. Half the Spanish character was Iberic and Lusitanian before either Jew or Saracen had seen the Rock of Gibraltar.

Of the early Spanish religion, we know but little. A remarkable passage in Strabo speaks to their literature. They had an alphabet. This is known from coins and inscriptions. And it was of foreign origin—Greek or Phœnician. This nothing but the most inconsiderate and uncritical patriotism can deny. Denied, however, it has been; and the indigenous and independent evolution of an alphabet has been claimed; the particular tribe to which it has more especially been ascribed being the Turdetani. These—and the passage I am about to quote is the passage of Strabo just alluded to—are "put forward as the wisest of the Iberi, and they have the use of letters; and they have records of ancient history,[22] and poems, and metrical laws for six thousand years—as they say."[6]

Now, whatever may be the doubts implied by the last three words of this extract, the evidence is to the effect that the old Iberians were a lettered nation; the antiquity of their civilization being another question. To modify our scepticism on the point, the text has been tampered with, and it has been proposed to read poems (ἐπῶν) instead of years (ἐτῶν). The change, to be sure, is slight enough—that of a single letter—from p (π) to t (τ); nevertheless, as it is more than cautious criticism will allow, the reading must stand as it is, and the claim of the Turdetanians must be for a literature nearly as old as the supposed age of the world in the current century,—a long date, and a date which would be improbable, even if we divided it by twelve, and rendered ἔτος by month instead of year. It denotes either some shorter period (perhaps a day) or nothing at all.

So much for the Iberians; of which the Lusitanians of Portugal were a branch; and of which there were several divisions and subdivisions involving considerable varieties both of manners[23] and language. In respect to the latter there is the special evidence of Strabo that their tongues and alphabets differed. And so did their mythologies. The Callaici had the reputation of being atheists; whilst the Celtiberi worshipped an anonymous God,[7] at the full of the moon, with feasts and dances.

But who were the Celtiberi? I have already said that there were difficulties upon this point. The name makes them a mixed people; half Celt and half Iberic. If so, the French influence in the Spanish Peninsula was as great in the time of Hannibal, as it was wished to be in the time of Louis XIV.