Lusitania (Roman province)

Lusitania , Roman province in the Iberian Peninsula. As constituted (c.AD 5) by Augustus it included all of modern central Portugal as well as much of W Spain. The province took its name from the Lusitani, a group of warlike tribes who, despite defeats, resisted Roman domination until their great leader, Viriatus, was killed (139 BC) by treachery. In the 1st cent. BC they joined in supporting Sertorius, who set up an independent state in Spain. The old identification of Portugal with Lusitania and of the ancestors of the Portuguese with the Lusitanians (hence Camões's great epic was entitled Os Lusíadas ) is now largely ignored, but the creation of Lusitania may have had a faint echoing effect in the setting up of the separate kingdom of Portugal many centuries later.

Lusitania, Portugal An ancient province of Hispania now roughly equivalent to modern Portugal. When Hispania was reorganized in 27 bc, Lusitania became a Roman imperial province, named after the Iberian people, the Lusitani, living here. It gave its name to a British Transatlantic liner that was sunk by a German submarine in 1915; 128 Americans (out of 1 198 passengers and crew) died and a wave of anger swept the USA, neutral in the war at the time; German submarine activity was mentioned as one of the reasons why the USA joined the First World War in 1917.