Loyalty was the flag –’signum’, as they would say in the Eternal City– of the legions. The Praetorian Guard, sword and shield of Rome, swore unconditional fidelity to the emperor. His maxim was to protect him; getting him to dodge Charon’s boat and a paid trip across the Styx. But his promise disappeared when he sank into eternal sleep. In return, in that pre-Roman Hispania considered by some citizens of the ‘urbs’ as a land of barbarians, righteousness crossed the borders of death thanks to the ‘Iberian devotion‘: a practice straddling myth and reality that forced soldiers to commit suicide if their boss died on the battlefield.
At least, that’s what we’ve been told over and over again over the last few centuries. Logical, because the myth overflows with that epicness always longed for in the history books. Reality, however, hides many more grays than blacks and whites. In recent years, experts such as Carmen Alarcón Hernández or Benjamín Collado Hinarejos have separated the fable from the truth. To begin with, it is wrong to call it Iberian, since the relationship between ‘dux’ and ‘devotii’ used to occur in the different pre-Roman towns of the peninsula. In addition, as Professor Jaime Alvar Ezquerra explains in his studies on the subject, “self-immolation” was not always the first option of soldiers.
classical fonts
It is difficult to break down the details of this concept. In the dossier ‘Clientela, hospitum y devotio’, Manuel Ramírez Sánchez defines it as a kind of military clientelism in which some ‘devotii’ dedicated their lives to a ‘dux’ or ‘strategos’, depending on whether the Roman or Greek texts are used . “Through it, the leader was protected by a circle of soldiers who accompanied him permanently, to the point that they were willing to protect the life of his boss with their own,” explains the Spanish expert. The relationship of servility and loyalty was such that, in the words of the classical authors, this personal guard considered it an insult to survive if their leader had died sword in hand.
One of the first authors to refer to this custom was Valerio Maximus, born in the 1st century BC In his texts, the writer left blank that, for the inhabitants of Hispania, “it was a disgrace to survive in a battle the one to whom they had offered their lives with the oath to defend his” . Your colleague Cayo Crispo Salustio he corroborated this idea and added that the soldiers devoted themselves to kings “and refused to outlive them.” Both were in favor of the fact that this curious custom was carried out only among the Celtiberians; in practice, the towns that inhabited the eastern sector of the plateau (Soria, Teruel, Cuenca…).
From here, the classical authors who refer to this tradition number in the dozens. As explained by the aforementioned Carmen Alarcón Hernández in the documented dossier ‘La devotio ibérica y R. Étienne’, one of the most explicit was Plutarch. In his texts, the historian of the first century AD made it clear that “it is an Iberian custom that those who form around a chief die with him and if he falls, and the barbarians there call it consecration.” What he did not talk about was suicide as such or the way to commit it. Something that the writer, geographer and chronicler Strabo (63 BC – 23 AD) did:
«The custom of carrying a painless poison, which they obtain from a plant similar to opium, is Iberian, to have it at their disposal in undesirable situations, as well as consecrating themselves to those to whom they are linked to the point of voluntarily dying for them» .
Already in the modern era, the expert who most defended that self-immolation was a key element of the ‘devotio ibética’ was the Frenchman Robert Étienne. In ‘Le culte impérial dans la Péninsule Ibérique’, this doctor in history made it clear that suicide was “a typically Iberian event that shows how far the ‘fides’ could go” of his fighters. In his opinion, the death of the ‘devotus’ was obligatory if his patron fell in battle; the thought of not having accomplished the mission he had sworn to be was too heavy a burden, just as it was for the Japanese. In turn, the late author considered that the Iberian people were linked to arms and that they could not live without war.
three examples
It is true: classical authors praise this custom to the point of hoarseness. But, in return, they do not leave a single example of collective suicides blank after the death in battle of a leader. What has been recorded in the history books are three cases that historians have traditionally described as ‘Iberian devotion’.
The first occurred during the war waged by Publius Cornelius Scipio in Hispania against the Carthaginians. In it, the two kings of the Ilerget people, Indíbil and Mandonio, they played a double game of alliances between one another until they declared their ‘devotio’ to the Roman. The pact, however, was broken –or so experts such as Alberto Prieto affirm– when false news was communicated to them: the death of the general. The betrayal cost them dearly. Shortly after rising up against the Roman legions, they were caught and executed along with their men.
The last day of Numancia (1881), by Alejo Vera
Even clearer is the case of Fifth Sertorius, Roman politician and general during the decline of the Republic. In the words of Plutarch, the loyalty and good military arts of the Iberians had captivated the Eternal City to such an extent that this character surrounded himself with a personal guard of Hispanic soldiers or ‘devotii’:
«The other chiefs were accompanied by a few squires and friends, but Sertorius was accompanied by many tens of thousands of men who had dedicated themselves to it. And it is said that, after a defeat before a city and when the enemies attacked, the Iberians, not caring about themselves, saved Sertorio, and lifting him up on the shoulders of one another they lifted him up to the walls, and when the chief was at saved, then every one of them fled.”
Representation of the Iberian warriors
The last example is framed during the siege of Numancia. Étienne is in favor of the fact that, when the caudillo retogenes He broke through the Roman siege in the 2nd century BC to ask for help, he did so accompanied by a retinue of five young men. All of them, combatants who had consecrated themselves to him through the ‘devotio’. A statement that does not convince Carmen Alarcón Hernández. “This news item, included in a story by Apiano, does not explicitly document the practice of ‘devotio'”, insists the historian.
There is a case that, although it does not refer to self-immolation as such, offers clues about how Hispanic warriors were seen in the ‘urbs’. According to Cassius Dioalready at the time of the Roman Empire there was a ‘devotio pro salute principis’ when the aedile of the common people Sixth Pacuvius Taurus he swore allegiance to the first emperor of Rome, Octavian Augustus. He wrote it like this: «And while some showed him their gratitude in an exaggerated way, Sexto Pacuvio or, as others call him, Apudio, he surpassed them all. During a meeting of the Senate he consecrated his own life to Augustus, in the manner of the Iberians, and advised all the others to do likewise.”
Myths of the ‘Iberian devotion’
In her extensive report, Carmen Alarcón Hernández also attacks some of the most widespread theories about the ‘Iberian devotion’. Her maxim is that we must strip this practice of the mythical character that has been attributed to it. What bothers him the most is this idea that warriors were forced to commit suicide when their boss died. Like many other colleagues –among them, Alvar himself–, the historian believes that they only resorted to this practice in isolated cases –when they could not do anything to ensure their salvation– and that “the abundant number of cases of abandonment of military clients to their employer”.
At the same time, he insists that it is not logical to see the Iberians as a monolithic faction, but rather as a group of peoples with a thousand independent customs behind them. The key, therefore, is that the ‘devotio’ should not be considered Iberian; an argument that Benjamín Collado Hinarejos also used on ABC a few months ago:
«The ‘devotio’ was widely used by the Carthaginians and Romans, especially the latter in the civil wars that pitted them against each other during the 1st century BC, and which were also partly fought in Hispania. Thanks to the devotion, the generals in conflict obtained totally faithful armies and willing to fight to the death. Although we usually speak of ‘Iberian devotion’, the truth is that very similar institutions also existed among other peoples on the Peninsula, such as the Celtiberians, and abroad, for example, in Gaul, Germany or in archaic Rome itself» .