<head>V. On Spain</head>The inhabitants are known as Turdetani and Turduli, some considering them to be the same and others different.
Among the latter is Polybius, who says that the Turduli are next to the Turdetani on the north.
The fertility of their country results in the Turdetani as well as the Celts, owing to their proximity, or as Polybius says, owing to their kinship, having a quiet and orderly character.
Dicaearchus, Eratosthenes, and Polybius and most Greeks place the Pillars at the Straits.
Polybius says there is a spring in the temple of Hercules at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Gades&groupId=594&placeId=1105">Gades</a>, a few steps leading down to the water, which is drinkable. It behaves in a contrary manner to the tide of the sea, disappearing at high tide and filling again at low water. The reason of this, he says, is that the air which comes from the depths to the surface of the earth is prevented, when the spring is covered by the sea as the tide advances, from finding its natural outlet, and is driven back to the interior, thus stopping up the passage of the spring and causing the flow of water to cease;
but when the spring is uncovered again the air resumes its direct course and sets free the veins of the spring so that it bubbles up in abundance.
Polybius, in speaking of the silver mines near <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=New Carthage&groupId=791&placeId=1430">New Carthage</a>, says they are very extensive and are distant about twenty stades from the town, extending in a circle for four hundred stades.
Here forty thousand miners lived who at that period produced for the Roman government a daily sum of twenty-five thousand drachmae.
I say nothing of the working of the mines in other respects — for it is a long story — but the lumps of silver ore which are washed down by the streams are crushed, he says, and passed through sieves into water. The deposit is then again crushed and while the water is running off undergoes a third crushing.
This is done five times in all and the fifth deposit, after the lead has been drained off, produces pure silver.
Polybius says that this river (the Baetis) and the Anas flow from Celtiberia, being distant from each other about nine hundred stades.
Polybius in enumerating the tribes and cities of the Paccaei and Celtiberians counts making the other cities Segesama and Intercatia.
The construction and splendour of the house of Menelaus as described by Homer recalls Polybius's description of the house of a Spanish king,
who, he says, vied with the Phaeacians in luxury, except that the bowls in the middle of the house which were made of gold and silver were full of beer.
Walbank Commentary