Viriathus - Death

Death

Knowing that the Lusitanian resistance was largely due to Viriatus' leadership, Quintus Servilius Caepio bribed Audax, Ditalcus and Minurus, who had been sent by Viriatus as an embassy to establish peace (Appian). These ambassadors returned to their camp and killed Viriatus while he was sleeping. Eutropius claims that when Viriatus' assassins asked Q. Servilius Caepio for their payment he answered that "it was never pleasing to the Romans, that a general should be killed by his own soldiers.", or in another version more common in modern Portugal and Spain, "Rome does not pay traitors who kill their chief". Quintus Servilius Caepio was refused his Triumph by the Senate.

After the death of Viriatus, the Lusitanians kept fighting under the leadership of Tautalus (Greek: Τάυταλος).

Laenas would finally give the Lusitanians the land they originally had asked for before the massacre. Nevertheless total pacification of Lusitania was only achieved under Augustus. Under Roman rule, Lusitania and its people gradually acquired Roman culture and language.

Viriatus stands as the most successful leader in Iberia that ever opposed the Roman conquest. During the course of his campaigns he was only defeated in battle against the Romans once, and from a military standpoint can be said to have been one of the most successful generals to ever have opposed Rome's expansion anywhere in the world. Ultimately even the Romans recognized that it was more prudent to use treachery rather than open confrontation to defeat the Lusitanian uprising. Some fifty years later, the renegade Roman general, Quintus Sertorius, at the head of another insurrection in Iberia, would meet a similar fate.