Iberia

After the Punic Wars, Rome redirected its full military weight toward the Iberian Peninsula and conquered most of it without significant difficulty. When Consul Servius Sulpicius Galba promised the surviving Lusitanians their own lands and then ambushed them when they arrived to claim those lands, a man named Viriathus was among the handful who escaped the massacre. Where other Lusitanian leaders called for a new treaty with Rome, Viriathus called for a counteroffensive. Outmatched in equipment and numbers, he developed a style of guerrilla warfare built on fast, imaginative ambushes and flanking strikes with iron spears and short swords — tactics that drove Rome's better-organized legions back and reclaimed the Iberian Peninsula from Roman control.