On the Callaeci and the eponymic issue: some remarks

Abstract

Taking as a starting point a paper published in the previous issue of Conimbriga (Fernández Calo, “The Callaeci and the eponymic issue”), various historiographical aspects are discussed, essentially based on classical literary sources and Latin epigraphy, concerning the location, both of the urban center of Cale, mentioned for the first time in the “Antonine Itinerary”, and of the populus/ ciuitas of the Callaeci, which literary tradition identifies as the first indigenous community located north of the Douro River that confronted the Roman consul Decimus Iunius Brutus when he made a military incursion to the northwest of the peninsula, in 138-137 BC. The triumph of the mission made Brutus to adopt the honorific cognomen Calaicus, celebrated in several monuments in Rome. It is concluded that, despite the fact that the study presented by Fernández Calo has the purpose of renewing the discussion on a fundamental theme of the Ancient History of the Northwest, the lack of new sources, namely epigraphic ones, does not allow significant gains to be achieved in the interpretation of the available data.