The Childhood of the City
There are spots that stand out in the ocean of time like islands unsubmerged. The flood of years has rolled onwards past and around them, and its billows have broken in vain against their shores. Such a spot is Toledo. It lifts its head above the ever-shifting waters of the ages, and looks forth unchanged, unchanging, across the sea of centuries—a last surviving beacon of the drowned mediæval world.
Very old is the city. It has outgrown decay. Nor can we conceive it as changing. It has almost become a part of the everlasting hills on which it stands. The rock has grown into Toledo and Toledo into the rock.
In a land where all is old, men marvel at the antiquity of this city. And when it was younger by centuries, the chroniclers, groping amid legends and fables the wildest and most extravagant, strove to penetrate the darkness of the ages and to discern the pale glimmerings of Toledo’s dawn. Here, surely, first trod the first man, thought the ancients, and here was already a city when God first placed His sun exactly over it in the yet-dark Heavens. If this was not so, said another chronicler, then beyond doubt Toledo’s seven hills were the first to appear above the waters of the Deluge, and Tubal, the grandson of Noah, established here a kingdom. So stories and traditions multiplied, each historian inventing a fresh one. These fables of the city’s founding are quaint, curious, and ingenious. Iberia and Hispania of course suggested persons, and so we find Iberia, daughter of King Hispan, and wife of a Persian captain, Pyrrhus, resorting in search of health to the banks of the Tagus, and her husband making a bower for her on these rocky steeps. Hercules, who is credited with the foundation of Seville, added the building of Toledo to his many labours. “Dismiss these far-fetched fables,” cries the learned prelate De Rada, “and admit that our city was founded by the Consuls Tolemon and Brutus, in the reign of Ptolemy Evergetes.” But another conjecture as absolutely baseless as the others! More interesting is the legend that the town was built by Jews flying from Nebuchadnezzar, by whom it was named Toledoth, “the city of generation.” Certain it is that Jews lived in Toledo at the earliest periods of its history, and played a great part, as we shall see, in its affairs. However picturesque may be these traditions and wonderings of the sages, we cannot resist the conclusion that the beginnings of this old capital of Spain were obscure and commonplace enough. Along the banks of the yellow Tagus savage tribesmen pastured their flocks and herds, and the more practical spirits among them recognised the advantages of the cliff above the river as a settlement. Doubtless mere temporary encampments succeeded each other here season after season, till some sentiment or necessity attached men permanently to the spot, and a rude cluster of huts was formed—the rough inception of our greatest towns.
The Celtiberians hereabouts were known to the Romans as Carpetani (how ill these Latin forms seem to reproduce the uncouth designations which these primitive peoples really bore!) The Carthaginians were the first civilised nation to come in contact with them, and we hear of a Punic governor, Tago. It is impossible to resist the suspicion that his personality arose, Aphrodite-like, from the river Tagus. But a Moorish writer gives a plausible account of a revolt which arose among the Carpetani consequent on Tago’s assassination by Hasdrubal, the contemporary of Hannibal. This brought that great commander himself upon the scene. Before him the tribesmen were scattered like chaff before the wind.
Did the African Phœnicians found a permanent station at Toledo? It would not seem so. No vestige or fragment, no trace whatever of their domination has come down to us. Most likely this was a mere trading centre, where the black-bearded, keen-eyed Semites bartered the wares of Africa and the East against the ores and fleeces of Spain. The population remained almost purely Celtic. One wonders if a few Carthaginians settled amongst them, and if their descendants became confounded with their kinsmen in race, the Jews. It is a wild conjecture, but might not the presence of such Semitic settlers have given rise to the fantastic legend of the founding of Toledo by the Children of Israel?
Where the Carthaginian sowed, the Roman reaped. And now the Carpetanian village looms in the light not of mere tradition, but of history. Livy tells us that in the year 193 B.C. the Pro-Consul Marcus Fulvius Nobilior defeated a host of Celtiberians, Vaccei and Vectones in this region, and took prisoner a king called Hilerno. In consequence of this victory Toledo—described as urbs parva sed loco munito—fell into the power of the conquerors. The wild rebellious Celts might henceforward chafe and lash themselves into impotent fury; on their necks the yoke of the Roman was firmly riveted, never by the natives unassisted to be shaken off.
Historians have remarked on the aloofness of the Toledans during the long winter of foreign domination. Between the various leaders and factions who made Spain their cock-pit, the citizens observed strict neutrality. They rendered no assistance to Viriathus in his magnanimous attempt to recover national independence. Perhaps they were not wanting in sympathy for their compatriots; but the conquerors had long recognised the military value of the town by the Tagus, and here we may suppose was always a strong garrison ready to stamp out the first efforts at revolt.
Under the wings of the Roman eagle, the material prosperity of Toledo steadily increased. From a collection of wretched huts, it had become a colonia, the capital of Carpetania. As such it would have had its arx, or citadel, prætorium, forum, temples, baths, and vici, or long suburbs straggling into the country. Of all these practically no traces remain. But in the Vega, outside the town, may be traced a semicircular enclosure, formed by masses of stones and mortar, about a metre in thickness, but of varying height. This space has been dignified with the name of Circus Maximum, and is undoubtedly a Roman work. But Señor Amador de los Rios has demonstrated almost conclusively that the Circus never advanced much beyond the foundations, which we now see before us probably in no very different state from that in which they were left some two thousand years ago. But though no Celtiberian captives or Christian martyrs here were “butchered to make a Roman holiday,” the consecration of the spot to the practice of cruelty bore fruit in after years. For the fires lit by the Inquisition were kindled here, and the Christian put the incompleted amphitheatre to the use for which it had been designed by the Pagan. To-day the men of Toledo play at pelota in the enclosure, and their cheery shouts may well scare away the ghosts of torturer and victim.
This may be regarded as the most important Roman remains in the neighbourhood of the city. The famous Cave of Hercules, which figures so largely in legendary lore, was probably the crypt or substructure of a Temple of Jupiter; and on the cliff-side below the Alcazar are a few fragments of a once-important aqueduct.
It has been conjectured from the dimensions of the projected Circus that the Romans had at one time thought of elevating Toledo to the rank of chief city of Spain. The design, if it ever was formed, was never carried into execution. Of what passed in the town under Latin rule we have but the vaguest notion. Toledo, like almost every other place in Europe, has its traditions of fierce persecution productive of local martyrs. Almost as many Christians were massacred in Spain, if we credit these stories, as Gibbon thinks perished in the whole Roman Empire. Among the martyrs of Toletum, it is perhaps superfluous to say, was a young and lovely virgin, in this instance called Leocadia. She was done to death by the truculent Dacian. St. Eugenius, the first bishop of Toledo, is said to have been a disciple of St. Paul. He was martyred at Paris, and his alleged remains were obtained from Charles IX. of France and presented to the city by Philip II.
In early ecclesiastical annals Toledo has less shadowy claims on remembrance as the seat of several councils, the most celebrated being those of 396, 400, 589. The minutes of the second council are preserved in the local archives. Miss Hannah Lynch makes merry over the fathers’ spirited denunciations of her sex. In truth, the irreverent reader is reminded of those other fulminations launched in the diocese of Rheims against certain persons unknown, and of the poet’s surprised comment on their want of effect. The sex fared better at the hands of the Council, however, than vegetarians and mathematicians, both of whom were excommunicated downright. Neither class is numerous in Spain at the present day, so the labours of the fathers may not have been altogether ineffectual.