Pollicitus meliora, tendis?
Carm. i. 29.
The metallurgic fame of Spain covers a period of nearly two score centuries. It is attested by Hudibras and Horace, by Le Sage and Pliny:—“Iron ores are almost everywhere found ... there is a variety of different species ... and great difference in the forges. But the greatest difference of all is the water, into which it is plunged when red-hot. This glory of her iron has ennobled certain places, as Bilbilis in Spain,” lib. xxxiv. cap. 14. Pliny here alludes to the town now known as Bilbao, which retained its reputation for sword-blades, like Toledo, down to a recent period. He speaks of it as a city in Tarracon or Cantabria, corresponding with the Basque Provinces of which Bilbao is one of the chief towns. How strange that, after the lapse of seventeen centuries, representatives from this very Bilbao should have accompanied the Asturian Deputies to England to solicit a subsidy of arms from the descendants of those who were such utter barbarians, when the cuirasses of Cantabria were eagerly sought after by the nobles of Imperial Rome!
The Greeks called Italy “Hesperia,” because it was situated to the west of them, and the Romans called Spain “Hesperia” equally, because it was to the west of Italy. But the Latin poets, imitating the Greeks, very frequently call Italy “Hesperia” also. Thus Virgil:
Est locus, Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt.
Æn. i. 534.
Macrobius prefers deriving the origin of the name, as applied to Italy, from its western situation, to the fact of its being chosen by Hesperus for his residence, when he was expelled by his brother Atlas: “Italy is called Hesperia, because it lies to the west.” (Macrob. Saturn. lib. i. cap. 3.)
Horace, when he applies the name to Spain, distinguishes the latter country by the addition of the word “ultima,” thus:
Qui nunc Hesperiâ sospes ab ultimâ
Caris multa sodalibus, &c.