[75]
They arrayed the body of Viriathus in splendid garments and burned it on a lofty funeral pile. Many sacrifices were offered for him. Troops of horse and foot in armor marched around him singing his praises in barbarian fashion. Nor did they depart from the funeral pile until the fire had gone out. When the obsequies were ended, they had gladiatorial contests at his tomb. So great was the longing for Viriathus after his death -- a man who had the highest qualities of a commander as reckoned among barbarians, always foremost in facing danger and most exact in dividing the spoils. He never consented to take the lion's share, even when friends begged him to, but whatever he got he divided among the bravest. Thus it came about (a most difficult task and one never before achieved by any other commander so easily) that in the eight years of this war, in an army composed of various tribes, there never was any sedition, the soldiers were always obedient and fearless in the presence of danger. After his death they chose a general named Tantalus and made an expedition against Saguntum, the city which Hannibal had overthrown and reestablished and named New Carthage, after his own country. When they had been repulsed from that place and were crossing the river Bætis, Cæpio pressed them so hard that Tantalus became exhausted and surrendered his army to Cæpio on condition that they should be treated as subjects. The latter took from them all their arms and gave them sufficient land, so that they should not be driven to robbery by want. In this way the Viriathic war came to an end.
Appian. The Foreign Wars. Horace White. New York. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1899.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a medium level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.