Iberia

“ The fourth pass, by which Pompeius and Canidius entered Iberia, led up from Armenia, and is referred to the high road from Erzrum, through Kars, to the N. [Aragus.]
The surface of the country is greatly diversified with mountains, hills, plains, and valleys; the best portion of this rich province is the basin of the Kûr, with the valleys of the Aragavi, Alazan, and other tributary streams. Strabo (p. 499) speaks of the numerous cities of Iberia, with their houses having tiled roofs, as well as some architectural pretensions. ”

“ The first division of this continent towards the west is Iberia, as we before stated. The greater part of this country is but little fitted for habitation; consisting chiefly of mountains, woods, and plains covered with a light meagre soil, the irrigation of which is likewise uncertain. The part next the north, which borders on the ocean, is extremely cold, and besides its rugged character, has no communication or intercourse with other [countries] , and thus to dwell there is attended with peculiar hardship. ”

“ The preponderance of authority is clearly in favour of designating Spain as “Iberia” or “Hispania,” and generally confining “Hesperia” to Italy. Ovid has a very [37] charming nymph named Hesperie, no connection, however, of the Hesperides, of whom the most famous was that Arethusa whose fountain-streamlet is so celebrated, and whose enchanting name has been tastefully introduced into the nomenclature of the British Navy. ”

“ HISPANIA, Spain, otherwise called Iberia, from the river Iberus. It has the sea on every side except that next to Gaul, from which it is separated by the Pyrenees. During the time of the republic, the whole country was divided into two provinces, Ulterior and Citerior, the Farther and Hither Spain. ”

“ Within a hundred years, however, in spite of numerous drawbacks, the wealth of the country has vastly increased, and the population has nearly doubled.
“The Spaniards are the descendants of various races, tribes, and nations. At the dawn of history, we find the country in possession of the Iberians and Celts. Of the Iberians we know but little. From them Spain received its ancient name, Iberia; and the Iberus River, now the Ebro, took the name by which, with slight changes, it is still known. ”

“ This book is to be entitled: ‘Travels, scientific, philosophical, artistic, and geological, in Spain, formerly Iberia; with critical observations on the government, the cooks, the literature, the routes, the agriculture, the dances, and the system of imposts of that country.’ With an affected negligence in his toilet, he is grave, circumspect, economical in the extreme; it is an imperfect fruit of that warm greenhouse of public men, who give precocious products without spring, without vivifying breezes, and without free air—products without savor or perfume. ”

“ We have no authentic history of the first peoples inhabiting Iberia, but it is believed that a remnant of their descendants yet exists in northern Spain, in the Basques, whose speech and customs differ from those of all others on the face of the earth. The Basques claim that they are descended from the original people, and say, moreover, that their language was the veritable speech of Paradise. ”

“ The sobriety of Iberia is proverbial. “Olives, salad, and radishes are fit food for a nobleman.” The physical stamina of the Spaniard is extraordinary, and amply explains the ease with which the conquistadores surmounted the fatigues which they were exposed to in the dreaded climate of the New World. These qualities make the Spaniard the best soldier of Europe, for he possesses the fiery temperament of the South joined to the physical strength of the North, without standing in need of abundant nourishment. ”

“ William Smith "to express the fact in ethnography that the Iberian race extended beyond the boundaries of Spain, and that they were to a great extent intermingled with the Celts in western Europe." [15] In the time of Strabo the Pyrenees formed the northern boundary of Iberia. ”

“ For us of Central and South America, Iberianism is a matter of sentiment, affection and veneration, not a matter of politics. Spain is our Mother Country, whence we came, where the names we bear are also borne, where the memories and ashes of our ancestors are guarded, of whose deeds we are proud, whose tongue we speak, whose religion we share, whose heroic character and customs we admire.... Spain is our pole star, the star to which we raise our eyes when we are despairing and when we face a sacrifice for God, for a woman, a child, or our country. ”

“ I answered that the Iberians were the ancient Britons, a dark-eyed, brown-skinned people who inhabited this country and all Southern Europe before the invasion of the blue-eyed races; that doubtless there had been an Iberian mixture in her ancestors, perhaps many centuries ago, and that these peculiar characters had come out strongly in her; she had the peculiar kind of blood in her veins and the peculiar sort of soul which goes with the blood. ”

“ Juvenal (P. C. 120) uses the name “Hispania” as the distinctive appellation of the country, which became better and more perilously known in his time than in the days of Horace and Virgil:
Horrida vitanda est Hispania.
Sat. viii. 116.
There is classical authority for a happy variety of names in describing Spain—“Hesperia,” “Iberia,” “Hispania:”
Tum sibi Callaïco Brutus cognomen in hoste
Fecit, et Hispanam sanguine tinxit humum.
Ov. Fast. vi. 461.
Herculis ritu, modò dictus, ô plebs,
Morte venalem petiisse laurum
Cæsar, Hispanâ repetit Penates
Victor ab orâ
Horat. Carm. iii. 14. ”

“ And the huntsmen deemed it best to listen to the words of their chief, for afar off they beheld the sun departing out of sight into that unknown region where the sea and the sky meet, and the Iberians worked not after the sun had set. The sun was to the Iberian the heavenly mansion where dwelt his one great God, whose presence was revealed in the golden glory that gave light and life to the sons of men. ”

“ The difference between Italian and Iberian is therefore very marked. Even the landscapes in each country prove it beyond a doubt. In Italy they are composed of soft rolling lines; the colours are varied,—green, red, and blue; the soil is damp and fruitful. In Spain, on the contrary, everything is dry, arid, and savage; blue is the sky, red the brick houses, and grayish golden the soil; the inhabitants are as savage as the country, and the proverbial "ma é piu bello" of the Italian does not bother the former in the slightest. ”

“ The race is the aboriginal Iberian, and has none of the languor of the south in it—a stubborn, not a supple race. The habits of the people are industrious. The growths are rather of the apple and the pine than the olive and the vine.
There before us rises the wall of Nature's handiwork which shuts us out from the true Spain. ”

“ AN ANDALUZ.
Naturally such contrasts of climate and country re-act upon the character of the denizens—be they human or feræ naturæ—of a land which includes within its boundaries nearly all the physical conditions of Europe and Northern Africa. But it is the peculiar mental cast and temperament of the Spanish race, as much as the physical causes alluded to, that have developed those clean-cut differences that to-day distinguish the various Iberian provinces. ”

“ From the Anglo-Saxon hithe, a haven.
I Iambic Verse. Poetical satires written in Iambics, or two-syllable foot measure, were originally so called after Iambe, an attendant upon one of the queens of Sparta, who kept a commonplace book of lively, free, and satirical pieces.
Iberia. The ancient name of Spain, from the Iberi, its original inhabitants. These were maritime adventurers from Phœnicia who penetrated the country by 155way of the River Ebro. When in course of time the Celts descended upon them from the Pyrenees, they spread themselves to the south and west. ”

“ Nearest of all the Iberian peninsula to our own land, the ancient kingdom of Galicia is as well-nigh unknown to us as any section of Europe. As far back as mankind's memory carries it has been Spain's "last ditch." Up into this wild mountain corner of the peninsula retreated in its turn each subdued race as conqueror after conqueror swept over the land,--the aboriginal Iberians before the Celts, the Celtiberians before the coast-hugging Phoenicians and Carthaginians, these before the omniverous Romans, followed as the centuries rolled on by Vandal, Suevi, Goth and Moor. ”

“ And so long as this remains true, so long will there be hope of a new Renaissance in the Iberian peninsula. By a nation's salads may you judge of its degree of civilisation; thus tested, Spain is in the van, not the rear, of all European countries. ”

“ The remaining part of Europe beyond the Pyrenees reaching to its western end and to the Pillars of Hercules is bounded on the one side by the Mediterranean and on the other by the Outer Sea, that portion of which is washed by the Mediterranean as far as the Pillars of Hercules being called Iberia, while that part which lies along the Outer or Great Sea has no general name, as it has only recently come under notice, but is all densely inhabited by barbarous tribes of whom I shall speak more particularly on a subsequent occasion. ”

“ The farthest western borders show most strongly the type of man whom we can imagine the Iberian to have been: Western Ireland, the Hebrides, Central and South Wales, and Cornwall are still inhabited by folk of Iberian descent. ”

“ The Iberian, as I know him in southern and south-western England, is, as I have said, more intelligent, or at all events, quicker; his brains are nimbler although perhaps not so retentive or so practical as the slower Saxon's. Apart from that point, he has more imagination, detachment, sympathy—the qualities which attract and make you glad to know a man and to form a friendship with him in whatever class he may be. ”

“ The word ‘Iberian’, as used by ethnologists, is not always confined to the Iberians of history, that is, the inhabitants of the Spanish peninsula and of Southern Gaul between the Pyrenees and the Rhône:1683 it is often loosely applied to a people, possessing certain common physical features, who inhabited various parts of the Mediterranean basin, and, according to some writers, notably Sergi,1684 penetrated in late quaternary and neolithic times into almost every country of Europe. ”

“ Nor can there be any reasonable doubt as to this small, dark-haired people being identical with the ancient Iberians of history, who have left their name in the Iberian peninsula [Spain] as a mark of their former dominion in the west. ... In ancient times they were spread through Spain as far to the south as the Pillars of Hercules, and as far to the north-east as Germany and Denmark. The Iberic population of the British Isles was apparently preserved from contact with other races throughout the whole of the Neolithic age. ”

“ Therefore when the great God took His presence away, and closed the shutters of his dwelling-place, the Iberian understood that the hour of rest had come, when he also should cease from labour, until the light of the presence should again appear in the east, blessing the works of men. ”

“ Iberia was devastated and subjugated by the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century. See TURKS (SELJUKS) : A. D. 1063-1073. IBERIANS, The western. "The numerous skulls obtained from Basque cemeteries possess exactly those characters which have been remarked ... in the Neolithic tombs and caves in Britain and on the Continent, and may therefore be taken to imply that the Basque-speaking peoples are to be looked upon as a fragment of the race which occupied the British isles, and the area west of the Rhine and north of the Alps, in the Neolithic age. ... ”

“ SPANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY CHAPTER I LAND AND PEOPLE Only in comparatively late years has the Iberian Continent been added to the happy hunting-grounds of the ordinary British and American tourist, and somewhat of a check arose after the outbreak of the war with America. ”

“ No one can look at a map of the Iberian Peninsula without being struck by the curious way in which it is unequally divided between two independent countries. Spain occupies by far the larger part of the Peninsula, leaving to Portugal only a narrow strip on the western seaboard some one hundred miles wide and three hundred and forty long. ”

“ So entirely similar, in fact, are all the peoples which have invaded or, we had better say, populated the Iberian Peninsula that we are unable to distinguish them anthropologically one from another. The Spaniards are akin to the Berbers in Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis. ”

“ His country is a large, squarish, mountainous land at the southwesternmost tip of Europe. To the north, over the tall wall of the Pyrenees Mountains, is France. To the west is Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean, and to the east is the Mediterranean Sea. Spain has more seacoast than any other European country and more mountains than any except Switzerland. Spain and Portugal together make up what is called the Iberian Peninsula. It is named for the Iberian people who came there from North Africa almost 5,000 years ago and settled down to become the ancestors of the Spanish people. ”

“ The Spanish Language
The Iberian Peninsula is not a linguistic unit. Not to speak of the Basque, which still forms an island of some importance in the north-west, three Romance languages share this extensive territory: (1) Portuguese-Galician, spoken in Portugal, Galicia, and a small portion of the province of Leon; (2) Castilian, covering about two-thirds of the Peninsula in the north, centre, and south; (3) Catalan, occupying a long strip of territory to the east and south-east. ”

“ But we sometimes see that they (the anthropologists) have not yet wholly emancipated themselves from the old written falsehoods when they tell us, as they frequently do, that the Iberian in this country survives only in the west and the north. ”