Ethos and funerary ideology

We know from Graeco-Latin literary sources (Servius Ad Georgicam [On the Georgica] 4. 218; Plutarch Sertorius [Life of Sertorius] 14; Strabo 3.4.18) that the indigenous peoples, particularly those in the Celtic area, had a system of dependency relationships in which the institution of the devotio (in other words, the consecration of a warrior to the leader, to the extent of not surviving him if he were killed in battle) was of essential importance.

It is possible that such practices, documented among the Gauls and the Germani, which explain the custom of funeral games (such as those held in memory of the Scipios in Carthago Nova in 206 BCE [Livy 28. 21] or on the death of Viriatus, the Lusitanian leader, in 139 BCE [Appian De rebus Hispaniae [On Hispania] 56]), made it easier to introduce the cult of the emperor into the Hispanic provinces. The Urso reliefs (Osuna, Seville), dating from between the third and first centuries BCE as well as various scenes from Celtiberian iconography, such as the “Warriors’ Beaker” from Numancia, document these remarkable duels which perhaps should be interpreted as a statement of indigenous identity opposing Rome (Olmos Romera 2003).

Sources (particularly Diodorus 5.34) also reflect the outstanding importance of hospitality among the Celtiberian tribes, something that has been confirmed by the dozens of bronze texts (tesserae) documenting pacts between cities, cities and groups, or individuals (Jordan Cdlera 2004; Balbin Chamorro 2006).

Some of the literature sheds light on funeral rites other than the traditional cremation. Silius Italicus (Punica 3.340-43) and Aelian (De natura animalium [On the Nature of Animals] 10.22) document how Celtiberians and Vacceans performed a ritual of leaving dead warriors in the open to be devoured by vultures who carried their souls to the heavens (Soperia Genzor 1995).

The rite seems to have been common among other peoples of Celtic Europe and explains the boldness and fearlessness of these peoples for whom, according to Lucan (Pharsalia 1.468), death was but the halfway stage of a long life.

The ritual indicates some concepts about an afterlife in the heavens (hence the rich astral iconography found in the Hispano-Roman gravestones of these areas). This is confirmed by scenes depicted on various stelae and pottery vessels from Numantia, Pintia (Padilla de Duero, Valladolid) and other places. These images of the Celtiberians or the Vaccei (their eastern neighbours) document one of the two routes to the other world in the cosmology of the Hispanic Celts, that of moving by air. But there was another, crossing by water, which predominated in the north and north-west of the peninsula, in scenes such as those to be found on the golden diadems of Mones (Pilona, Asturias), with warriors and riders, birds and fish together with figures carrying enormous cauldrons - receptacles that in the Celtic tradition symbolize abundance and immortality - linked to an indigenous princeps, or on Hispano-Roman stelae such as the one at Sarria (Lugo) (Marco Simon 2008). In any event, these “resistance iconographies” (Aidhouse-Green 2004: 215ff.) against romanitas, especially those on Celtic ceramics, which we now know date from after the Roman conquest of Numancia in 133 BCE, document a nostalgic view of traditional cosmology and of values centred on the threefold sphere of war, crossing to the other side and worship which, unable to evolve further in a world dominated by Rome, were transferred to the iconographic realm of beakers and funeral robes or monuments (Marco Simon 2007).

Ethos and funerary ideology

More on the topic Ethos and funerary ideology: