See GYPSIES.
LUSIGNAN, House of.
See JERUSALEM: A. D. 1149-1187, 1192-1229, and 1291;
also, CYPRUS: A. D. 1191, and 1192-1489.
LUSITANIA.
LUSITANIANS.
The Lusitani or Lusitanians were the people who resisted the
Roman conquest of Spain most obstinately—with even more
resolution than their neighbors and kinsmen, the Celtiberians.
In 153 B. C. they defeated a Roman army, which lost 6,000 men.
The following year they inflicted another defeat, on the
prætor Mummius, who lost 9,000 of his soldiers. Again, in 151,
the prætor Galba suffered a loss of 7,000 men at their hands.
But, in 150, Galba ravaged the Lusitanian country so
effectually that they sued for peace. Pretending to arrange
terms of friendship with them, this infamous Roman persuaded
three large bands of the Lusitanians to lay down their arms,
which being done he surrounded them with his troops and
massacred them in cold blood. One of the few who escaped was a
man named Viriathus, who became thenceforth the leader of his
surviving countrymen in a guerrilla warfare which lasted for
ten years, and which cost the Romans thousands of men. In the
end they could not vanquish Viriathus, but basely bribed some
traitors in his own camp to murder him. The Roman province
which was afterwards formed out of the country of the
Lusitanians, and which took their name, has been mistakenly
identified with the modern kingdom of Portugal, which it
coincided with only in part.
_W. Ihne,
History of Rome,
book 5, chapter 6 (volume 3)._
ALSO IN:
_H. M. Stephens,
The Story of Portugal,
chapter 1._
See PORTUGAL: EARLY HISTORY.
On the settlement of the Alans,
See SPAIN: A. D. 409-414.