in more serious conflictsa dreaded guerilla chief, and who was one of the few that had accidentally escaped from the perfidious onslaught of Galba—­warned his countrymen against relying on the Roman word of honour, and promised them deliverance if they would follow him.  His language and his example produced a deep effect:  the army entrusted him with the supreme command.  Viriathus gave orders to the mass of his men to proceed in detached parties, by different routes, to the appointed rendezvous; he himself formed the best mounted and most trustworthy into a corps of 1000 horse, with which he covered the departure of his men.  The Romans, who wanted light cavalry, did not venture to disperse for the pursuit under the eyes of the enemy’s horsemen.  After Viriathus and his band had for two whole days held in check the entire Roman army he suddenly disappeared during the night and hastened to the general rendezvous.  The Roman general followed him, but fell into an adroitly-laid ambush, in which he lost the half of his army and was himself captured and slain; with difficulty the rest of the troops escaped to the colony of Carteia on the Straits.  In all haste 5000 men of the Spanish militia were despatched from the Ebro to reinforce the defeated Romans; but Viriathus destroyed the corps while still on its march, and commanded so absolutely the whole interior of Carpetania that the Romans did not even venture to seek him there.  Viriathus, now recognized as lord and king of all the Lusitanians, knew how to combine the full dignity of his princely position with the homely habits of a shepherd.  No badge distinguished him from the common soldier:  he rose from the richly adorned marriage-table of his father-in-law, the prince Astolpa in Roman Spain, without having touched the golden plate and the sumptuous fare, lifted his bride on horseback, and rode back with her to his mountains.  He never took more of the spoil than the share which he allotted to each of his comrades.  The soldier recognized the general simply by his tall figure, by his striking sallies of wit, and above all by the fact that he surpassed every one of his men in temperance as well as in toil, sleeping always in full armour and fighting in front of all in battle.  It seemed as if in that thoroughly prosaic age one of the Homeric heroes had reappeared:  the name of Viriathus resounded far and wide through Spain; and the brave nation conceived that in him it had at length found the man who was destined to break the fetters of alien domination.

His Successors

Extraordinary successes in northern and in southern Spain marked the next years of his generalship.  After destroying the vanguard of the praetor Gaius Plautius (608-9), Viriathus had the skill to lure him over to the right bank of the Tagus, and there to defeat him so emphatically that the Roman general went into winter quarters in the middle of summer—­on which account he was afterwards charged before the