Basque History of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

of several thousand liberated Varduli, a Basque tribe from Guipúzcoa, whom he took with him when he was exiled to Africa. When he was able to return to Rome, he brought them to frighten his patrician Roman adversaries. The Varduli ran wild in the imperial city and, in fact, frightened almost everyone in Rome. They attacked patricians and raped their wives. Finally, Marius’s ally Sertorius ordered his troops to their camp, where he had the Varduli Basques killed with javelins.
    A tour of duty in the empire was twenty-five years, and so Basques saw the empire and its inventions. They were at peace with Rome. There is no record of a conflict between Basques and Romans from 20 B.C. for the next four centuries until the fall of Rome. This may have been the longest period of peace in Basque history.
    As they learned of new ideas, they expressed them in Euskera with Latin words. Olive is oliba ; statue is estatu , which also means “state”; statesman is estatari .
    If a new idea offered commercial opportunities, the Basques embraced it—a characteristic that would remain with them throughout history. Through their mountain passes, they traded the olive oil they had learned about from the Romans, just as they did the wheat and iron they had learned of from the Celts. The iron and wheat trades continued long after the Celts had left, and the trade in Roman products long survived that empire as well.
    But though Basques learned from both the Celts and the Romans, they did not assimilate with either one. All of Iberia except Vasconia was speaking a Latin language, living under Roman legal institutions, and practicing the Roman religion, which by the fourth century was Christianity. South of the Ebro in present-day Castile, north of the Adour in present-day Aquitaine, and to the east in present-day Aragón, all areas the Romans preferred to Basqueland, the people were assimilated. They spoke a Latin dialect and acquired the Christian religion.
    But only a few Basque areas left any records of Christianity during Roman rule. By modern times these same places had completely lost their Basque identity. Calahorra, the Roman city on the Ebro, where stories of early Basque Christian martyrs have been preserved, today is no longer Basque. Today, the closer in Basqueland one is to the Ebro, the more Roman influence can be felt. The part of Basqueland with the fewest Euskera speakers is southern Navarra and Alava, the part the Romans wanted. The olive groves and vineyards that the Romans introduced in these areas flourish. Pre-Roman Basques probably cooked with animal fats and drank fermented apple cider, but modern Basques cook almost exclusively with olive oil and reserve the butter that they produce in their northern mountain pastures only for baking. And they are wine drinkers. Only occasionally do they consume cider made, during the winter, from the apples that prosper in Guipúzcoa.
    But in the mountains on both sides of the Pyrenees, the Basque language and culture have remained strong. The borders of cultural zones remain much the way the Romans left them 1,600 years ago. The Romans were clearly the most effective assimilators the Basques ever encountered. Given enough time, they might have swallowed up the remaining Basques as they did most of the cultures in the empire. But before that could happen, the Roman Empire fell.
    I N THE LONG Basque memory, the Roman Empire is considered a good period. In the context of Basque history a good period was one with a reasonable invader, an intruder with whom you could do business. Today, Basques still refer to this time as an example of how they would like to peacefully coexist with larger powers.
    In the unstable atmosphere of power vacuums left by the decline of Rome, several groups moved into Iberia. These so-called barbarians—Vandals, Suevi, and Alans—easily passed the Basque ports of the Pyrenees, overran Pamplona, took the Ebro, and passed on to control most of the peninsula without