72 Habits of the Celtiberians

used beds of straw. At meals the guests were seated
round the walls in order of age or dignity, the food
being carried round to them. Gymnastic competitions,
boxing, racing, and equestrian sports, were popular.
At carousals the natives would dance to the flute and
trumpet, or leap into the air, bending the knees to give
force to the spring.
Where coinage was unknown, either barter prevailed
or pieces of silver plate were cut up and used as money.
Condemned criminals were hurled from rocks, parri-
cides stoned outside the boundaries of the township.
Sick persons are said to have been put out into the
road to ask the advice of some passer-by who might
have been similarly afflicted — probably an example of
the Greek traveller's habit of generalizing from one or
two instances. Along the estuaries and marshes of the
west coast coracles of hide or rough canoes cut from
a single trunk might be met with.^

The Celtiberi of central Spain are described as
among the most self-confident and isolated of all the
tribes. Brave, active, and sober, they were hospitable
to strangers, but fierce to malefactors and enemies.
They had some dealings with foreign merchants, buy-
ing from them the wine from which their national drink
of mead was compounded. Their special industry was
the forging of arms, an art in which they were un-
surpassed in the ancient world, the chief seats being
Bilbilis and Toletum. As among the Celts, it was
thought honourable to have a large following of ad-
herents. In war the Celtiberi used a wedge-shaped
formation to break the enemy's line at a single point,

^ Avien. Or. Mar. 103 ; Strab. III. 3, 7 ; Dion. Perieg. 744.
