READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM 2025

HISTORY OF ROME. THE WAR FOR SUPREMACY IN THE EAST

CHAPTER VI.

THE WARS IN SPAIN UP TO THE FALL OF NUMANTIA,

200-133 B.C

Historians have long been reluctant to recognise in the history of the world a development according to fixed laws, dependent on external nature. On the one hand a guiding Providence, on the other hand human free will, have been looked upon as altogether independent of laws, and consequently unfathomable. It is true scientific repolitical search, which has everywhere endeavoured to investigate the laws which regulate phenomena, has not yet at its command sufficient materials to determine the results which, in spite of occasional deviations, must necessarily ensue from the reciprocal action of nature and man, results which might be looked upon as the intentions of the divine will. But in one respect man is confessedly so completely under the influence of nature that an entirely free course of action is quite out of the question. As every individual is under the influence of space, so every political association, being established in a particular region on the varied surface of the earth, is endowed from the very beginning with more or less capability of expan­sion, and has no choice as to the direction in which such a capability is to be manifested. We have had to notice earlier in this history how important the central position of Rome was for the establishment of her dominion over Italy. The position of the Italian peninsula, in the centre of the Mediterranean countries, was not less important for the foundation of an empire including all these territories. The enemies of Rome, being thus separated, succumbed one by one to the central power. Hence the process of subjugation was continued almost uninterruptedly and equally on all sides when, with the victory over Pyrrhus, Rome had come out from her former isolation. The conclusion of the Hannibalic war hastened this process. We have traced its course in Greece, Illyria, Macedonia, Asia, and Africa. We have now to turn our eyes away from these civilised states to the barbarous countries of Spain and that part of Gaul which lies at the foot of the Alps. After this survey, we shall turn to the inner life of the Roman commonwealth, in order to investigate as far as possible the nature of the forces which produced such tremendous effects, and to study the influence of external power upon the inner national life, an influence which was visible during the whole of this time, weak at first, but gradually increasing until, after violent revolutions, it worked out a new constitution for the Roman world.

We see plainly by the position which Spain occupied with regard to Italy, Greece, and the East, during the five centuries previous to our era, how geographical separation keeps nations apart from one another in an age when the means of communication are but feebly developed. Though, from the earliest ages, the rich country in the far West had been the subject of wonderful tales, yet the bold Phoenicians ventured but stealthily and rarely to steer their ships towards it, and to settle here and there on the coast. From Massilia their rivals, the Greeks, did not advance further than Emporia, where they were obliged to watch and defend their walls and their single gate day and night against the natives, who had settled all round. No arm of the sea opened access into the compact interior of the peninsula. Lofty mountain ranges rose up steep and wild, separating the fertile strip of low land by the sea from the vast table land of the interior. It was not until the unhappy issue of the first war with Rome that the Carthaginians succeeded in extending their dominion inland from a few fortified settlements on the coast. Had they been able to continue their work of colonisation, and to touch and penetrate the rude natives with their spirit, they would probably have developed in this country forms of civil and political life which might have been of great influence as a new element in the Graeco-Roman civilisation of antiquity.

Just as in climate and in the nature of the soil, in her unbroken coast line, her rarely navigable rivers, and the  high lands in her interior, with their arid steppes, Spain represented in miniature the peculiarities of the opposite African continent, so the original inhabitants of both countries, through affinity of race, or through the influence of similar climate and soil, show similar mental qualities. The original Spanish tribes had the virtues and the vices of barbarians. The multiplicity of small states and almost unceasing wars fostered courage while, especially in the more mountainous parts, they kept the people in poverty. The men were occupied chiefly in warfare for the sake of plunder. Domestic work and agriculture were left to the women. At the same time we meet with a degree of contentment and simplicity of living, a perseverance in fatigues and dangers, which remind us of the hardy inhabitants of the African and Arabian deserts, and contrast strikingly with the Gauls, who were notorious for their fickleness, their gluttony, and their excitability. In spite of all wars and migrations, the character of the European nations has essentially remained what it was in antiquity. We may therefore be justified in recognising in the chivalrous, proud, and frugal Spaniards of our time the true descendants of the old Iberians.

Among the inhabitants of the valleys and plains which slope towards the Mediterranean milder manners and more settled institutions were found than among the tribes of the interior. The Turdetanians, in what is now called Andalusia, exhibited even the beginnings of a national civilisation and literature. The fertility and the delightful climate of this favoured district almost spontaneously produced wealth, and attracted from the highlands hordes of mountaineers eager for plunder. Between these marauders and the foreigners who also collected with the hope of profit and plunder, the inhabitants of the coast districts had no chance of maintaining an independent position. The foreigners assumed the part of protectors of the weak and peaceably disposed against their trouble­some neighbours, and as long as this protection did not degenerate into oppression the relation between them was mutually satisfactory and advantageous. The Carthaginian dominion lasted exactly long enough to excite the national aversion to foreigners. Then the Romans interfered as deliverers and allies of the Spaniards, and thus succeeded at the beginning in gaining the sympathies of the natives. The friendly understanding lasted until the Carthaginians were entirely driven out of Spain. But after the humiliation of Carthage the deluded Spaniards began to perceive that they had only exchanged one master for another. The Romans did not dream of giving up Spain after they had once set their foot in it. They had, it is true, great difficulty in holding the land, and the immediate advantages won for the republic were scarcely perceptible. But as long as Carthage existed, the Romans feared that she might rise once more to power, as she had done under Hannibal, and therefore they must retain possession of Spain, where Hannibal had collected his forces for the attack upon Italy. The country therefore remained occupied by Roman troops, and was divided into two military districts, the provinces of citerior and ulterior Spain, i.e. the east coast, from the Pyrenees to the Xucar, and the south coast as far as the Anas (Guadiana). The boundaries of these districts towards the interior were uncertain, as must always be the case when the conquest of land takes place slowly and gradually. Between the Roman provinces and the peoples of the northern and western parts of the peninsula, who had not yet been attacked or even become known, lived several tribes in the half-free condition of Roman friends and allies, who were ready on every opportunity not only to repel the invasions of the foreign conquerors into their own territory, but even to make inroads into the Roman province, and to support the revolts of tribes already conquered.

It would be very instructive if we could carefully and Wars in accurately trace the course which the Romans pursued in the extremely arduous task of conquering Spain, known. But for this investigation we lack trustworthy materials. The reports which the Roman governors sent home of their achievements and their successes were one and all disfigured by vanity and private interest, and out of these reports Roman annalists, who had the vaguest notions of the geography and political condition of Spain, compiled a history to the honour and glory of the Roman republic, in which, as in a labyrinth, the historian gropes about without comprehending how the separate parts fit into the plan and scheme of the whole. We must not venture into this labyrinth for the purpose of compiling a complete narrative in chronological order; but we may attempt to form, from the scattered fragments of trustworthy record, an outline sketch of the wars in Spain, until we arrive at that point where the grand figure of Viriathus and the heroic struggle of the little town of Numantia will rivet our attention.

The first difficulty which presented itself to the success of Roman arms in Spain was the great distance of that country from Rome, and this difficulty was increased by the faintheartedness of the Romans at sea and by their aversion to naval enterprise. Instead of sending their troops straight across the Tyrrhenian sea, they usually let them march by land as far as Pisa or Luna, and then sail along the Ligurian and Gallic coast, until they reached Emporiae or Tarraco, where they landed and continued their march by land to New Carthage or Gades. This road to Gades was about six times as long as the distance from Brundusium to Thessalonica in Macedonia. The history of the war shows what difficulties were caused by this great distance.

These difficulties were increased by the peculiar organization of the Roman civil and military service, which required annual changes in all the chief offices of state. We have seen how this difficulty was felt even in the Sicilian war. Nor was it otherwise in Macedonia and Syria. It was absolutely necessary to make some changes in the old practice, especially by prolonging the time of service in the legions, by enlisting more volunteers and veterans, and by employing more auxiliaries and mercenary troops. These deviations from the old Roman practice are strikingly apparent in the Spanish campaigns of the Hannibalic war. At the same time the prolongation of the command in the hands of one man became more frequent. But this last change, which would have had a most salutary effect upon military affairs in general, was not carried out systematically, lest the aristocracy, and even the republic, might suffer from it. The Romans did not wish their Spanish generals to return home with a taste for monarchy, and they preferred to sacrifice the chance of rapid conquests in that country.

The simplest substitute for a standing army for the safety of the Spanish provinces would have been a systematic colonisation of Spain by Italians. By Roman and Latin colonies the old republic had taken firm possession of the Italian peninsula. Nothing could have been more natural than to apply this process to Spain, a country the climate of which was peculiarly favourable for the bodily health of the Italian peasant, and in which no superior culture opposed the spreading of the Latin language. Colonisation was actually begun by Scipio Africanus. He had settled a number of old soldiers in the fertile valley of the Baetis, and had thus founded Italica, the first Italian town beyond the sea. All circumstances strongly recommended the continuation of this course. In the years which followed the first conquest the Roman soldiers had married Spanish women, and the result was a mixed population of Spanish and Italian blood. Such were the people who in the year 171 BC founded Carteja as a Latin colony, not far from the Straits of Gibraltar. But here the attempts at a systematic colonisation of Spain began and ended. It became necessary, therefore, from the lack of a sufficient supply of native mercenaries and auxiliaries, to supply annually from Italy the troops needed for the harassing campaigns in Spain.

Service in Spain was exceedingly disliked. There were no easy, bloodless victories to be gained here, as in Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor, and no rich towns to be plundered. On the contrary, the battles were hard-fought, the fatigues exhausting, and the booty comparatively small. The Roman citizens and the Italian peasants were not easily induced to risk their lives in a foreign land to fight against enemies by whom their homes were not threatened, and to do so without any prospect of personal profit, but merely in order to give the members of the ruling houses an opportunity of acquiring honours, triumphs, and riches. Spain, it is true, was not actually poor. Prisoners of war could always be sold as slaves, and in the Spanish mines much silver had been found which was current in the land. But the Roman commanders were mostly intent upon filling their own pockets first; and few were so sensible or so just as Cato, who conducted the war in Spain in 195 BC, and caused the booty to be distributed as much as possible among the mass of the common soldiers. The result was that war in Spain was more a system of plundering than fair and honest war. Leaders and troops became so savage that they have been surpassed only by the descendants of the Spaniards, who for the sake of plunder hunted down the natives of Mexico and Peru as if they had been wild beasts. The bare acts of violence, the treachery and bloodthirstiness which marked the dealings of the Romans in Spain as they marked the conduct of Spaniards at a later period in America, would be hardly comprehensible, if we were not justified in believing that they regarded the natives as an inferior race to be dealt with wholly according to their good pleasure.

The wars which the Romans carried on in Spain ever since the year 200 BC exhibit a succession of battles, surprises, stratagems, victories, and defeats following each other, as it seems, quite capriciously. At one time the country appears quiet and peaceful; at another the fire of insurrection suddenly breaks out and spreads over extensive tracts which had long been thought secure. The Romans were compelled from time to time to make great efforts, and, to a certain extent, to begin anew the task of conquest. Thus in the year 195 BC almost the whole country was lost to them. When Cato arrived he was obliged to fight his first battle at Emporiae, i.e. on the extreme north-eastern frontier. The proctor Marcus Helvius, who was at this time returning to Rome from the southern province, needed a body of six thousand men to conduct him safely through the enemies all along the coast line. The losses which the Romans sustained were very serious, as we can ascertain even from the disfigured reports in the Roman annals. In the year 197 the proconsul Caius Sempronius Tuditanus was defeated in a great battle, in which he himself was killed, with a number of Roman nobles. In the year 194—the year after Cato’s campaign, which has been so much boasted of and represented as quite successful—the praetor Sextus Digitius fought several bloody battles against insurgent tribes, and lost almost half his troops. In the year 190 Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who afterwards defeated Perseus, lost six thousand men in the southern province, and barely saved the rest of his army by a disorderly retreat. Five years later another battle is mentioned in which two Roman armies were beaten and five thousand men killed. Had not such reverses as these been balanced after a time by victories, Roman dominion in Spain must, of course, soon have come to an end. But historic doubts are nowhere more justified than when Roman generals and annalists talk of their military exploits. In this respect even men like Cato were boastful, and from this model Roman we learn emphatically that modesty and truthfulness are not to be reckoned as specially Roman virtues. Cato boasted, among other things, of having destroyed more towns in Spain than he had spent days there. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, we are told, carried on the war after the same fashion (179— 178 BC). To him three hundred towns had surrendered, and he compelled the Celtiberians to submit to Rome. Numerous were the battles in which Roman generals slew thousands of enemies, and obtained a right to ovations, thanksgivings, or even triumphs. Thus Aemilius Paullus (190 BC) repaired his defeat by brilliant victories in which he killed thirty thousand enemies. He then conquered two hundred and fifty towns, and, after the expiration of his year of office, defeated the Lusitanians with an army collected in the greatest haste, killing eighteen thousand of them, and taking over two thousand prisoners, after which he left the province contented and loyal, and retuned to celebrate his triumph in Rome. Similar events occurred again in the year 185, and still oftener in later years, until it became almost a fixed rule, and the war presented a monotonous and, on the whole, a wearisome picture. The Romans are represented as invariably victorious in the end. In spite of their courage the Spaniards were unable to resist either the martial strength of the Romans or their policy. Internal jealousies made it easy for the Romans, as we have already seen, to set the Spaniards to fight against one another, and the conquest of the whole country would certainly have advanced more rapidly and steadily had not the Roman officials, by their unbounded greed, harshness, and cruelty, almost compelled the natives again and again to rebel. We can form an idea of the proceedings of the Roman magistrates in Spain from the complaints which the Spaniards made in Rome in the year 171. The senate found themselves at last called upon to appoint officers for the special purpose of investigating complaints. Thus it was that Spain gave the first impulse for the establishment of those judicial commissions which had to try Roman magistrates for extortion (the Quaestiones repetundarum), and were designed to protect the provincials from illegal treatment on the part of the governors. The intention of these courts was good, but it was seldom realised. The very first commission was of bad augury for those that followed. Of three accused men one was acquitted by the senatorial judges. The two others escaped condemnation by going into exile—one to Praeneste, the other to Tibur. Further complaints of the Spaniards were cut short by the departure of the praetor Canuleius, who left Rome to go into his province. Thus the remaining trials were quashed; in other words, the Spaniards were denied judicial redress, although the most eminent statesmen—such as Scipio Nasica, Aemilius Paullus, and even the severe Cato—had been appointed to act on their behalf. It can have been no great satisfaction to the ill-used Spaniards to learn that their oppressors now no longer dwelt in Rome, but in some pleasant suburban villa in its neighbourhood. The disgraceful denial of justice, of which Rome was guilty in screening her unjust citizens and sacrificing to them her subjects, bore bitter fruits, and had to be expiated by long years of suffering. For the present the senate thought that they had done enough in issuing a decree to the effect that the provincial magistrates were not to be unfair in levying the taxes and extraordinary contributions.

We do not know whether the regulations which the senate made had any practical effect, and induced the governors to be more reasonable. Perhaps we may infer thus much from the fact that for several years from this time Spain enjoyed a period of comparative peace. This, however, may have been partly the result of a treaty which in the year 178 BC had been concluded with a number of towns by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and by which their relations to Rome had been regulated. In these treaties the sovereignty of the Roman republic was recognised, and the Spanish tribes were obliged as Roman allies to supply auxiliaries if necessary, or to pay contributions of war, in return for which Rome undertook their military protection. As long as the Romans contented themselves with the formal recognition of their dominion, and did not make use of their alliance with the Spaniards as a pretext for oppressing them, the natives remained quiet, and their masters were at leisure to regulate the administration of their two Spanish provinces, to establish order in the collection of the revenue, in the working of the mines, and in the administration of justice, and to accustom the natives to Roman modes of life.

The division of the peninsula into Roman provinces and communities, more or less independent, could not be of long duration. The march of conquest could not come to a standstill unless the expansive power of Rome collapsed, for no lasting peace can be maintained at any time between barbarians and a civilised state. One would imagine that the Spaniards, being the more restless and reckless, would have given the first occasion for new disputes. But it appears that, with the exception of the hordes that lived exclusively by plunder, they had a correct idea of the strength of Rome, and desired nothing more than to live in peace with their powerful neighbour, provided only they were allowed to retain a moderate degree of independence. It was the Romans themselves who first renewed the strife.

After the defeat of Perseus, 168 BC, and before the outbreak of the third Punic war, 149 BC, the arms of Rome were not directed against any of the other great civilised states which might be considered as equal or nearly equal to her in power; and thus a suitable opportunity seemed to present itself for continuing the interrupted conquest of Spain, and for acquiring honour and profit for the Roman nobility. The senate and the town populace, in whose hands lay the direction of Roman policy, cared little whether war was or was not advantageous to the Italian peasantry. The interest of Rome alone was taken into account.

Among the cities which had concluded the treaty with Gracchus was the Celtiberian town of Segeda, inhabited by the tribe of the Bellians. This people had resolved to enlarge their city by uniting with it several neighbouring townships belonging to the Tithians, another Celtiberian tribe in the interior of Spain. But in the year 154 BC, when they were occupied with the building of the new town-wall, an order came from Rome bidding them to desist, and at the same time a demand was made for tribute and for an auxiliary contingent. The Bellians refused to obey these orders, because, according to the treaty with Gracchus, they were deprived only of the liberty of building a new town, not of that of enlarging the one which they already inhabited, and because, up to this time, they had paid no tribute and supplied no soldiers. As the Romans insisted upon their demand, the war broke out afresh. The consul Quintus Fulvius Nobilior invaded the territory of Segeda in the year 153  with a powerful army of thirty thousand men. The inhabitants, with their wives and children, abandoned their incompletely fortified town, and took refuge among the brave Arevakians, whose capital was Numantia (on the upper Douro). When Fulvius pursued them into these mountainous regions, he was unexpectedly attacked and defeated, with a loss of six thousand Roman troops. The seriousness of the Spanish war again became evident on the very first encounter. The defeat was suggestive of the great catastrophes of Caudium and the Allia, and the anniversary of it, the 23rd of August, was reckoned henceforth among the fatal days of the republic, and was carefully avoided by the Roman generals for warlike undertakings. As the Spaniards had lost many men, among them their brave leader Carus, and as Fulvius had received reinforcements, consisting chiefly of Numidian cavalry and elephants, he shortly afterwards advanced and drove the enemy into the town of Numantia. Before this town a second battle was fought, and again the Romans were compelled to abandon the field with almost equal losses. The elephants, which the Spanish tribes now encountered for the first time, inspired, as usual, fear at the first moment; but when one of them was wounded, the rest became wild, and, rushing through the Roman ranks, caused the defeat. The unfortunate Fulvius was worsted a third and even a fourth time at last the town of Okilis, where he kept his military chest and his supplies, was lost by treason. The winter approached, and caused a great mortality among the exhausted and famished troops. The campaign which Rome, in the consciousness of her power, had undertaken without necessity, ended in a check so disastrous that, had her enemy been a state of equal power, it might have been followed by the most serious consequences. As it was, the defeats of Fulvius Nobilior had as their result only a new and larger enlistment for a second campaign.

In the year 152 BC M. Claudius Marcellus took the field with new troops to the number of eight thousand five hundred men, reconquered the town of Okilis, and, more by wise moderation than by force of arms, induced several tribes to ask for peace. He himself used his influence in Rome on behalf of the Spanish tribes, who demanded nothing but a continuance of friendly relations on the terms of the treaties of Tiberius Gracchus in the year 179 BC. The negotiations, however, were broken off when the senate insisted on unconditional submission. In fact, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who was appointed consul for the year 151 BC, desired a command in which he would have a chance of winning glory and money, and accordingly he made great efforts to prevent a peaceable settlement of the dispute, although, after the late misfortunes, the war in Spain had lost all charm for the Roman soldiers and subaltern officers. Marcellus, nevertheless, carried his point. He came to an agreement with the Arevakians, the Bellians, and the Tithians, according to which they were to pay an indemnity, to give hostages, and to submit to him personally. The tribes who had so recently been victorious could give no more striking proof of their peaceable disposition. They were wise enough, in spite of their military success, not to defy Rome, and they probably obtained from Marcellus the assurance that their formal submission should not furnish a pretext for enslaving them, but that, being, as hitherto, Roman allies, they should preserve their independence.

In thus establishing peace on his own responsibility and against the senatorial decree, Marcellus must have had very strong reasons of his own which could not be appreciated in Rome. The year 153 BC, which, as we have seen, had brought serious defeats upon the Roman arms in Celtiberian Spain, was disastrous also in the south­west. The Lusitanians on the lower Tagus (whether from their own impulse, or exasperated by the Romans, or tempted by the success of their countrymen in Celtiberia, we cannot say) had taken up arms under a chief called Punicus, had defeated a Roman army under Calpurnius Piso and Manilius, with a loss of six thousand men, and had thereupon invaded the territory of the tribes friendly with Rome. In the following year, whilst Marcellus was stationed in Celtiberia, they defeated the praetor Lucius Mummius, inflicting on him a loss of nine thousand men, took his camp, and sent the trophies captured in it all about Spain, to excite the nations to a general insurrection against the foreign invader. Though Mummius, as we are told, afterwards obtained such advantages that a triumph was accorded to him in Rome, yet matters in Spain remained in a precarious state, and Marcellus probably was right in inducing the warlike Celtiberians by concessions to keep the peace.

But such considerations, it appears, were not regarded by men like the grasping and ambitious Lucullus. In consequence of the last defeats in Spain, this officer had had great difficulty in levying troops in Rome, and had been obliged, instead of selecting the best men, to enlist troops by lottery; but although the common soldiers, and even the higher officers, so dreaded service in Spain that the requisite number of military tribunes and legates could not be found until young Scipio gave the example by voluntarily offering his services, Lucullus was nevertheless determined to carry on the war in that country. He did not, indeed, venture to violate the treaty concluded by Marcellus, which had probably been sanctioned by the senate; but he at once, and without either provocation or any order from Rome, attacked the peaceable tribe of the Vaccaeans beyond the Tagus. When these in their consternation begged for mercy, Lucullus at first demanded hostages, one hundred talents of silver, and a contingent of cavalry. Having obtained this, he insisted that the town of Cauca should receive a Roman garrison. When this order also had been complied with, Lucullus ordered his whole army to march into Cauca, to slay all within it who were capable of bearing arms, and to plunder the place. This act of unparalleled atrocity not only disgraced the Roman name, but roused to desperate resistance a tribe which, in spite of natural courage and martial spirit, had made great sacrifices to preserve the peace. The treacherous and savage lawlessness of Lucullus was but one of very many instances which showed what Rome herself would have to expect from her nobility, if the evil passions of these men should ever have full play in any civil disturbances in Rome. But it was a still worse sign for the Roman republic that such a crime was not punished, or, as far as we know, even censured.

On hearing of the monstrous atrocities committed in Cauca, the inhabitants of the neighbouring country fled into the woods and hills. The town of Intercatia, however, to which Lucullus now laid siege, resisted obstinately. After a time the Roman legions began to suffer from want and sickness in this devastated land, and Lucullus offered favourable terms to the besieged; but how could the barbarians trust a man whose very name was synonymous with breach of faith? Not until young Scipio had pledged his word that the terms should be conscientiously kept, did the Intercatians surrender, giving hostages and supplying ten thousand cloaks and a certain number of cattle. In the hope of obtaining gold and silver from them Lucullus was deceived, for they had none. But hearing of the wealth of the town of Pallantia, he marched across the Durius with a courage and perseverance truly Roman. The season must have been far advanced. The troops were exhausted and the country offered but scanty resources. The enemy surrounded the Roman army, and cut off all supplies. Lucullus was obliged to make up his mind to beat a retreat, which he accomplished, though continually molested by the Spaniards, until he reached his winter quarters in Turdetania, the modern Andalusia.

In the same year, 151 BC, the praetor, Marcus Atilius Serranus, had carried on the war in the southern province. It appears that he gained some advantages there, and induced all the Lusitanian communities to submit. But he had no sooner marched off to his winter quarters than the Lusitanians, in conjunction with another tribe, known as the Vettonians, set upon him, and kept him closely  besieged in his camp. From this perilous situation he was rescued by Servius Sulpicius Galba, the praetor designated to succeed him. Galba was a man qualified to vie with Lucullus in all the vices to which Roman provincial governors were addicted. At once resuming the war against the Lusitanians, because, as he alleged, they annoyed Roman allies, he achieved no better success than his worthy colleague. After a defeat which cost him seven thousand men, he hastily retreated, and spent the winter with Lucullus in the southern province. There these two agreed upon joint action for the subjection of the Lusitanians. In the year 150 Lucullus attacked some bands who were engaged on plundering expeditions, and killed some thousands. Galba traversed the country in another direction, marking his route by devastations. An embassy from the Lusitanians begged for peace, and for a renewal of the treaty which they had concluded with Atilius. Galba pretended to agree to their representation, and promised to settle them on fertile lands, so that they should not have to live by plunder. The simple-minded barbarians believed his words, and a large number came to be conducted to the promised tracts of land. Galba divided them into three groups, persuaded them to lay down their arms, which, as friends of the Romans, they could no longer need, and then caused them to be surrounded and slain by his own troops. Of the whole number only seventeen escaped, but among them there was one who was worth many thousands. This was Viriathus, a man who, although a barbarian and of low descent among barbarians, defied for the next eight years the armies of flic proud republic, and thereby secured for himself a position in history among the feared and fearful enemies of Rome, a position almost equal to that of Hannibal and Mithridates.

The deed of Servius Sulpicius Galba was one of exceptional blackness, even for an age which had witnessed many acts of cruelty. If the conscience of his contempo­aries had not revolted against it, we might not have been justified, perhaps, in making Galba personally responsible. But we should then have to look upon the Roman people as being still on the lowest level of human feeling, and we should find it difficult or impossible to explain how such a people could create a state worthy of being called civilized, and establish their dominion over other nations. Happily the conscience of the Roman people was not yet so blunted as to defy all principles of decency and humanity in its dealings with strangers or even enemies. It still made sometimes a difference between hostile nations and the wild beasts of the forest. Even Cato, who was now eighty-four years old, and who used to sell his slaves when they were aged and infirm in order not to be obliged to support them, thought the treatment of the Lusitanians culpable, and almost with his last breath supported the charge against Galba which the tribune Lucius Scribonius brought before the tribes. The trial which ensued appears to have awakened the most lively interest. Galba himself was among the most famous orators of his time, specially gifted with the power of touching his hearers, a power which, in a popular court of law like that of the Roman tribes, produced a much greater effect than cool logic and a sound knowledge of jurisprudence. He succeeded, it is said, in moving the people to compassion by pointing to his children, who, without him, would perish as forsaken orphans By such theatrical tricks the Roman people were cajoled in a matter in which they were bound to act as incorruptible judges. They acquitted Galba, and thereby made themselves partakers of his guilt. Galba’s crime was from this time forward, if not justified, at least excused and forgiven. But the accusation and trial showed that the feeling of justice among the Romans condemned the deed; while the acquittal of the confessed malefactor proves that there were considerations under which Roman magistrates regarded themselves as released from all obligations of justice and humanity. Justice was, indeed, made subordinate to the policy of factions and individuals. Such a state of things presented in truth a gloomy prospect, not only for the provinces, but for the whole state. But the acquittal of Galba was still more to be deplored, if it be true, as Appian reports in plain words, that he procured it by bribing the judges. The punishment which the guilty man escaped had to be borne by thousands of Italian soldiers who were, year after year, led to Spain to be butchered. The war was now indeed a fiery war, as Polybius calls it, and the fire could be quenched only in streams of blood. Viriathus, awakened by misfortune and the pressure of war to the consciousness of his military genius, and soon appreciated by his admiring countrymen, carried on the heroic struggle of the small tribe of Lusitanian barbarians against the gigantic power of Rome. He possessed all the qualities of body and mind needed for conducting an irregular war in the mountains. As wily and deceitful as he was brave, he managed to entice Roman generals into regions where death awaited them, or to surprise them where they thought themselves secure. So blind and clumsy were these men that, one by one, as they succeeded each other in the yearly command, they were caught in the same trap, like animals which learn nothing from the experience of others.

In the year 149 BC, Viriathus gave the first proof of his qualifications as a commander. With a small troop of horse he kept in check a Roman army which had almost surrounded the Lusitanians, and covered the retreat so that it was accomplished without loss. He then enticed the Romans by a feigned flight to a place where he lay in ambush, and killed four thousand of them, including their leader, Caius Vetilius. After this he totally annihilated an army of five thousand men which the Bellians and Tithians, in compliance with their new treaty, had sent in aid of the Romans. The years that followed proved equally disastrous to the Romans. Caius Plautius was defeated twice with great loss in 184 BC, and in the next year Claudius Unimanus suffered a still greater reverse. The captured fasces of the lictors were exhibited, with other trophies, far and wide on the Spanish mountains, and encouraged the stubborn Lusitanians and Celtiberians to continue their resistance. It was just the time when the last wars were being waged with Carthage (149-146 BC), Macedonia, and Greece. Naturally the hopes of the expiring nations in the East and in Africa revived when they heard how legion after legion perished in the gorges of the Spanish mountains. But Viriathus was not able to lend them a helping hand, and when they at length succumbed, his fate too seemed decided. Rome had her hands free once more. After a period of several years, during which not consuls, but praetors only, had been sent to Spain, a consul again set out in the year 145 with two new legions, for the seat of war in the West. This was the eldest son of Aemilius Paullus, who, having been adopted by the Fabian family, bore the name of Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus. He carried on the war against Viriathus for two years; but even he was not able to break the resistance of the Lusitanians, or to make any noticeable impression upon Viriathus; acting, however, in his command with Fabian precaution, he succeeded in conquering several towns without suffering any great reverses. It seems likely that some events occurred extremely unfavourable for the Romans which our informants have concealed; for in the following year the Arevakians, Bellians, and Tithians, who had made peace (in the year 150), again rebelled, and took part, in the war. Thus a new struggle in Celtiberia was added to that in Lusitania, a struggle which was destined to have an ominous sound in Roman ears ever after. It was the war with the small but heroic Numantia, the town of eight thousand fighting men, which for ten years following defied the powerful republic, and fell only after having inflicted on Rome a disgrace similar to that of Caudium. This memorable struggle will occupy our attention later on. For the present we must rapidly trace the progress of the war against Viriathus, which continued without interruption and with little change of military fortune.

Having fought unsuccessfully under a certain Quinctius in the year 143the Romans in the following year made greater efforts. The consul Quintus Fabius Maximus Serviliauus, whio, like the son of Aemilius Paullus, had passed by adoption into the Fabian family, and was therefore in law a brother of Q. Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, was sent to Lusitania with a new consular army and reinforcements, consisting especially of elephants. It seemed, however, that the successes of the bold barbarian chief were only to be the greater in proportion to the strength of the armies which the Romans opposed to him in the field. The new consul allowed himself to be deceived like his predecessors. In his first encounter he drove his enemies before him. At least they retreated, or seemed to retreat. Perhaps it was only a stratagem to lure him on. If so, it succeeded completely; for the Roman general in his eager pursuit fell into an ambush, was defeated with a loss of three thousand men, and disgracefully driven back to his camp, which his discouraged soldiers could only with difficulty defend. But after this disaster the fortune of war suddenly changed. At any rate, the consul managed, in the absence of Viriathus, to surprise several towns and take ten thousand prisoners. Thinking that he could cow the Lusitanians by severity, he caused five hundred of his prisoners to be beheaded, and the rest to be sold as slaves. He spared a chief who surrendered to him, but caused the hands of his warriors to be chopped off. In the next year Fabius tried to follow up his successes, and besieged the town of Erisane. But Viriathus penetrated with a reinforcement into the hard-pressed city, made a sally, drove the Romans from their siege­works, and forced them to retreat into a rock-bound valley, where all escape was impossible. The whole Roman army, including the consul, was in his power. He might now have proceeded, in his turn, to cut off the hands and heads of his enemies. But the barbarian did not abuse the fortune of war. He hoped to obtain peace by showing clemency, and dismissed the Roman army uninjured, after the consul had agreed to an honourable treaty. The treaty was sanctioned in Rome. Viriathus was recognised as a friend of the Roman nation, and the Lusitanians as the independent possessors of their country (141 BC).

Thus the war which had been waged for nine years against the Lusitanian Hannibal seemed ended; at any rate peace was concluded. But how could Rome seriously live in peace with such an enemy? Was not their recent disgrace a thorn in the flesh, which must be pulled out? The peace, as Appian reports, did not last even a short time. Quintus Servilius Caepio, the consul for the following year (110 BC), and brother of Fabius Maximus Servilianus, succeeded to the command in the south of Spain. Upon his remonstrance that the treaty was dishonourable for Rome, he received permission from the senate to exasperate Viriathus secretly, then to violate the treaty, and finally to wage war openly. Unfortunately the imperfect reports of our informant do not enable us to obtain a clear insight into this latter period of the great war. It appears that the Romans succeeded in sowing dissension in the camp of Viriathus. He felt that he was no longer strong enough to defy the legions in the open field, and at length found himself compelled to sue for peace. If we may believe a short report of Dio Cassius, he caused his own father-in-law to be murdered, and delivered up to the Romans several other leaders of the revolt, whose hands the consul caused immediately to be chopped off. But when the Romans required him to give up his arms he refused. He remembered the massacres committed by Galba, and preferred to die fighting as a free man to being slaughtered without the means of defence. Roman pride had now descended to a level of disgrace lower than that which would be involved by the acceptance of equal terms of peace. The proconsul was not ashamed to hire murderers to rid himself of the enemy whom he could not overcome in  field. Among the most intimate friends of Viriathus were some who had come into the Roman camp for the purpose of continuing the negotiations. These were induced by presents and promises to do the deed. There was a vast contrast between the manner of acting in these times and that which had been so often and so loudly extolled in the past, when the Roman people indignantly rejected designs for the murder of their enemies. Viriathus, who was wont to sleep but little, and never slept except in full armour, was yet surprised when asleep in his tent, and stabbed by the traitors. The Roman consul welcomed the murderers in his camp, and sent them to Rome to receive their reward. It is merely an empty boast of a later historian, fond of hollow phrases about the virtues of the ancient Romans, that Servilius Caepio disdained to avail himself of the services of the murderers, saying that the Romans never sanctioned the murder of a general by his soldiers. The crime of which their national hero had been the victim once more roused the enthusiasm of the Lusitanians. Having given him a magnificent funeral, they elected Tautamus to be his successor, and penetrated into the Roman province, devastating it as they advanced. But it soon appeared that with the death of Viriathus the spirit of the nation had been paralysed. Tautamus was repulsed, pursued, overtaken on the banks of the Bietis, and compelled to surrender at discretion. The Lusitanians were disarmed; but so much land was left to them that they could live by agriculture, and had no temptation to resume their predatory life. The country, it is true, was even then far from being pacified. Roman generals had repeatedly to fight against armed bands or insurgent communities, as, for instance, Junius Brutus, in the years 138 and 137; but the struggles of the expiring people never again assumed the proportions of a war such as that which had been waged by Viriathus. In truth the war was over in the year 139 BC. It was a war justly called by Velleius sad and disgraceful. It was sad and disgraceful fur the Roman arms, but in a far higher degree for Roman morals. It sowed moreover the seeds of the Numantine war, in which both the warlike ability and the moral virtues of the Roman nation appear more deteriorated than even in the war with Viriathus.

In the year 143 BC, as we have seen, the Celtiberian tribes of the Arevakians, Bellians, and Tithians, who had concluded peace seven years before, were encouraged by the successes of the Lusitanians to take up arms once more. The most important towns belonging to these tribes were Termantia and Numantia, the latter situated on the upper course of the Durius (Duero), in a position strongly fortified by nature and by art. Steep precipices surrounded it on all sides except one, and here the inhabitants had constructed mounds and stockades instead of walls. In this small town the chief interest of the war is concentrated, as is that of the Lusitanians in the person of Viriathus. It was the soul of the resistance which the brave Celtiberians opposed for ten years to the power of Rome; and not until it had fallen could the war be regarded as having come to an end. It must be counted among the wonders of history that so insignificant a town, defended only by eight thousand men and supported by a nation of barbarians small in number, sustained such a glorious struggle against the power which, having defeated Carthage, Macedonia, Greece, and Syria, now ruled the world without a rival, and had at its command an almost unlimited number of brave and well-disciplined soldiers. The wonder is not explained only by the courage of the Spanish nations, which is above all praise, nor by the distance of the seat of war from Rome, and the difficulties of the ground; but it is to be attributed, in conjunction with all these causes, which certainly were of great moment, to the incapacity of the Roman generals.

As we have but scanty information, we can trace the course of the war only in its mere outlines. During the first two years the command was in the hands of Metellus, who, on account of his victory over the false Philip, bore the name of Macedonicus. He appears to have made no progress towards reducing the two towns of Termantia and Numantia, but to have performed the task of devastating the open country so successfully that the Numantines made an attempt to conclude peace. They declared themselves willing to give hostages and to pay an indemnity. But when they were also required to deliver up their arms, they hesitated. They could not make up their minds to trust themselves to the Romans, of whose treachery they had seen too many proofs, and the war accordingly went on.

Metellus was succeeded in the command, 141 and 140 BC, by Quintus Pompeius, a ‘new man’, that is, not a member of the nobility; a man, therefore, of whom one would expect that great military merit and proofs already given of ability had raised him to so high a position as that of first magistrate in a warlike republic. But it seems he was only a good speaker and lawyer, and had, like Cicero at a later time, acquired influence by these qualities. In this manner he had naturally become the enemy of the old noble families, which regarded the highest offices in the republic as exclusively their property and inheritance. He could justify his election and his electors only by gaining great triumphs in Spain. Unfortunately he failed most signally and covered himself with disgrace. Neither on Numantia nor on Termantia did he produce the least impression. All his undertakings ended in a series of reverses, in which he lost a great number of men. New troops were sent from Rome to relieve the old soldiers, who had now served six years in Spain. With the reinforcements came a senatorial commission, not, as was generally the case, to organize conquered provinces, but, on the contrary, to investigate the state of affairs and to give advice to the incapable general. When the winter arrived the new troops suffered from cold and other inconveniences in the inhospitable, devastated country, and were exposed, on their foraging expeditions, to the attacks of the indefatigable mountaineers. Pompeius despaired of his ability to subdue the enemy by force of arms. He therefore tried what he could do by persuasion, and found this means far easier. The Numantines, like the Lusitanians, like the Carthaginians, like Perseus and even Hannibal after the victory at Cannae, like the Samnites in ancient times, were prepared to make great sacrifices in order to obtain peace with Rome, although the course of the war was calculated to inspire them with self-confidence and even defiance. They came to a formal agreement with Pompeius to submit to the Romans, to give hostages, to exchange prisoners of war and deserters, and to pay, moreover, thirty talents of silver. Secretly Pompeius promised them that their submission should be only a formal one, that they should preserve their independence, and, what was of the greatest importance to them, their arms. In this manner, perhaps, he thought he could finish the war, even though he had gained no victories. But when, in the year 139, his successor, the consul Marcus Popillius Laenas arrived, and the Numantines offered to pay him the remainder of the indemnity, he declared the treaty to be invalid, and the wretched Pompeius saw no other way of escaping from the difficulty than by denying the secret promise which he had made. The result was a dispute between him and the Numantines, which the new commander cut short by ordering both parties to plead their case in Rome. The senate decreed that the war should go on. We do not hear that the duplicity of Pompeius was condemned or even censured.

The war was resumed and carried on with the same result as before. Popillius Laenas, consul of 139 BC, had no better success than his predecessors. According to Appian, he attacked the neighbouring Lusonians, probably while the negotiations with Numantia were still going on in Rome, he accomplished nothing. Livy reports that he was even routed in a pitched battle. His successor (137 BC) was the consul Caius Hostilius Mancinus. This man filled to the brim the cup of military disgrace which the Romans were obliged to drain. He allowed himself to be repeatedly beaten by the Numantines. His troops became so disheartened, that, on the mere report of the approach of- the Vaccaeans and Gallaekians, they fled in a dark night from their camp in great disorder, and were surrounded by the Numantines in a place which had many years before (153 BC) been a fortified camp of Fulvius Nobilior, but which had since been neglected, and was no longer in a condition in which it could be of any use. Although far superior in numbers to the enemy, they did not dare to fight their way through. The unfortunate Mancinus had no alternative but to surrender.

No two events have probably ever occurred so like each other in the smallest detail as the capture of Mancinus before Numantia and the defeat of the legions in the Caudine passes. On this occasion, as on the former, the Roman general was compelled to save his army by a disgraceful treaty, in which he granted the enemy peace and independence. The treaty was rejected by the senate, and no compensation was offered to the Numantines for the advantage they had sacrificed by trusting to Roman integrity. The Numantines, with much chivalry, and appreciating only their own strength and that of their enemies, had waived the right of inflicting upon the Romans the disgrace of passing under the yoke; nevertheless, the national dishonour was for the Romans far greater than at the time of the Samnite wars, because the superiority of Rome over Numantia was overwhelming, whilst in the Samnite wars the strength of the belligerents was almost evenly balanced. If, at the former time, the Romans might have excused their treachery by saying that the war with Samnium was a life-and-death struggle, it was on this occasion nothing but Roman imperiousness and Roman pride, mingled with the personal interests of the nobility, that denied to the citizens of Numantia the right of living as free men in the mountains of distant Spain.

We may, indeed, be astonished that the Numantines, after they and other Spanish tribes had had such sad experience of Roman faith and honesty, once more entered upon negotiations, when they had it in their power to annihilate a whole Roman army by one blow. It is true they tried to secure the recognition of the treaty by causing it to be sworn to by a number of the higher officers, and especially the quaestor Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, as well as by the consul Mancinus. But they might perhaps have known that a similar measure had been of no avail to the Samnites, though they moreover had kept six hundred Roman knights as hostages, a precaution which the Numantines neglected. It is strange that no one seems to have thought of detaining the whole army as prisoners until peace should be concluded. Perhaps the frivolous renewal of the war with Viriathus had shown that there could be no prospect of a real and lasting peace, unless the Romans felt themselves overcome by the magnanimity of their enemies; and, indeed, if Numantia had had to negotiate only with the people of Rome, and not with the selfish and shameless nobility, such a calculation would have been correct. The Roman people were not disinclined to make peace, because the Spanish war annually demanded great sacrifices, and brought no profit. But the nobility refused to give their sanction to the treaty concluded by Mancinus with the Numantines; and the conqueror of Carthage especially, who was at this time very powerful, used his influence to oppose the peace. Even the wretched consul Mancinus, with the show of self-denying patriotism, advocated its rejection, knowingfull well that he would be delivered up to the Numantines as the guilty person, and equally convinced that, like the Samnites of old, the Numantines would refuse to release the Roman people from all their obligations by punishing a single individual. The quaestor Gracchus in vain advised his countrymen to respect the treaty for which he had pledged his honour. He and the other guarantees were declared not to be responsible. Mancinus alone was given up to the Numantines by the Roman fetialis. Naked, with chained hands, he was brought before the town, and when the Numantines refused to receive him, he remained there a whole day, forsaken and rejected, as it were, by the whole world. Hereupon, the auspices having been consulted, he was again admitted into the Roman camp, and returned to Rome, where, in spite of the objections of some scrupulous casuists, he was permitted to resume his former position as a Roman citizen.

Thus Rome, under the sanction of her most eminent citizen, had renounced the obligation which the head of the republic had taken upon himself in the name of the commonwealth. We see plainly in this, as in so many other dishonourable actions of which the Romans were guilty, that in that age of the world’s history outrageous violations of right and justice on the part of the powerful were not restrained or controlled by the verdict of public opinion, or, at any rate, that if such a verdict was muttered, Roman ears were deaf against it.

Immediately after his capitulation, Mancinus had proceeded to Rome to abdicate, and in his stead his colleague, M. Aemilius Lepidus, had taken the chief command in Citerior Spain. Whilst in Rome the question was being discussed whether the treaty should be approved of or rejected, military operations were naturally suspended. But Aemilius Lepidus did not like to be idle at the head of an army. Finding some frivolous pretext for making war upon the Vacceeans, he invaded and devastated their coun­ry, and laid siege to their capital Pallentia. In vain the senate tried through two envoys to dissuade him from a war which was unnecessary and, under the prevailing circumstances, even unadvisable. The time was long past when new wars were undertaken only after a formal vote of the people; and, indeed, what could the peasants of Latium know about the advisability of a war in a country which they hardly knew by name? Even the orders of the senate were no longer respected by the generals, who were intent above all upon increasing their own fame and profit. Lepidus took no notice of the instructions sent out to him. Having once begun the war, he thought that the dignity of Rome demanded that it should be carried on. The Vaccaeans, however, were men of a like stamp with the brave defenders of Numantia. Lepidus suffered an utter defeat. He lost six thousand men, was obliged to abandon his camp with his arms, and even the sick and wounded, and escaped the fate of Mancinus only by a retreat which was much like a flight. If he had been victorious, his disobedience to his instructions would probably have been overlooked. But his defeat was a proof of his guilt. He was recalled, tried, and condemned to pay a fine.

The war with Numantia paused for the next two years, 136 and 135, although the treaty of peace concluded in 137 had been rejected. We do not know whether this was the result of the losses which the Romans had sustained, or whether they did not like to resume the war at once. But the interruption shows how entirely the Romans had it in their power to continue the war, or to let it rest, as they chose. They had no reason to fear that the Numantines in their turn would become the aggressive party while they were taking breath and leisurely preparing for the next campaign. For the year 134 Scipio Aemilianus was chosen consul for the second time, in spite of a law, passed probably seventeen years earlier, which regulated the order of magisterial elections, and altogether prohibited the re-election of a consul. The Romans were heartily sick of the war, and thought that, in the prevailing scarcity of able leaders, the conqueror of Carthage was the only man who could reduce the stubborn little town in Spain. Scipio was permitted, as his grandfather had been, to ask for voluntary aid from the allies. We have no details of this aid; but it is stated that Jugurtha, the grandson of Masinissa, joined him with Numidian archers and elephants. Among the young soldiers who came from Italy in the same army was Caius Marius, and thus the two men met for the first time and as comrades in arms, who were destined at a later period to stand opposed to each other in a most desperate war. By degrees other men also appeared on the scene who took a part in the revolutions of the succeeding period. We have already met with Tiberius Gracchus, and the names of Pompeius, Lepidus, and others cast before them a shadow of that age of blood and horrors which awaited the republic in the next generation.

Scipio’s first task, when he arrived in Spain, was to accustom the army which he found there, once more to Roman discipline. We have already been compelled to notice how Roman soldiers from time to time lost their ancient military virtues, and gave themselves up to luxury and indolence, so that a strong hand was required to tighten the rein, and to teach them again the qualities of soldiers. As it had been in Macedonia and Africa, so it was now in Spain. The camp was filled with a useless and noxious train, with harlots and soothsayers, with traffickers of every description, who purchased the booty of the soldiers, and supplied them with the objects of enjoyment and luxury. Military duties were performed in a slovenly and careless manner, and cowardice—the most unroman of all vices—began to creep in. Scipio did not dare to lead an undisciplined mob into the field against the brave Numantines until he had again made soldiers of them. He drove the useless rabble out of the camp, and swept away all the superfluous baggage, all the costly utensils for the use of the table, and all the soft couches which had been carried along by the army on innumerable waggons. The soldiers were allowed only a spit for roasting, a copper kettle, and a drinking horn, and were made to sleep not in beds, but upon straw, as their general himself set them the example. All the vehicles which were not absolutely indispensable were sent away, as well as the great number of mules and horses on which it had become customary for the soldiers to ride, for marching on foot had almost been forgotten. Scipio then unmercifully compelled the soldiers to drill from morning till night, to dig trenches and fill them again, to build fortification walls and pull them down again, to make long marches in rank and file, loaded with all their arms and baggage. He always showed to his men a, severe and gloomy brow, and was sparing even in legitimate indulgences.

Among such preparations the summer of 131 BC passed away without any serious attack being made upon Numantia. Scipio then advanced to the town, and took up a position before it in two camps, one of which he placed under the command of his brother Fabius Maximus. His operations were similar to those which he had adopted with success at the siege of Carthage. He persisted in declining a battle, though repeatedly challenged by the Numantines. It was too great a risk, he thought, to lead his troops against men who were determined either to conquer or to die. The means to which he trusted were a blockade and the effects of hunger, and, having sixty thousand men at his disposal, he could, in the approved old manner of the Romans, draw a double ditch and a wall ten feet high and eight feet thick round the town, and wait patiently behind it until hunger should have done its work. His lines extended for more than five miles, and, as Numantia lay at the confluence of two rivers, they were intersected by three river-beds. There was also a lake or pond in the line of circumvallation, along the margin of which only a mound and not a wall could be erected. The river Durius, by which the town had hitherto kept up communication with the country, was blocked by Scipio with beams covered with sword-blades and spear-heads, and fastened by ropes so as to float in the river, and prevent the besieged not only from receiving aid, but even from obtaining news from without. Day and night the line of circumvallation was guarded by the besiegers, who relieved one another, and repulsed all attempts of the Numantines to fight their way through. A few bold men, indeed, contrived in a dark night to scale the wall and to slip through the Roman ranks in order to report to their countrymen in the neighbouring towns the distress of Numantia, and to ask for help. But in one town only did they find the younger men willing to aid them; and these patriots were soon punished by Scipio, who appeared at the head of a Roman detachment, and caused their hands to be cut off. Numantia was left to her own resources ; and when at length hunger began to produce its terrible effects, when the besieged inhabitants were driven to eat the flesh of the dead, and to slaughter the weak and sick, then their stubborn courage gave way, and they surrendered at discretion. But not all of them could be induced to take upon themselves the yoke of slavery. A great number committed suicide. The remainder fell into the hands of the victor, a number of beings whose savage appearance and gloomy look of hatred made them rather objects of fear and horror than of compassion. Scipio selected fifty to adorn his triumph, the rest he sold as slaves. Thereupon he razed the town to the ground. Ide had no distinct order from the senate to do this, as he had had with regard to Carthage; but he was eager for the honour of being called the destroyer of this town also, which had so long resisted the Roman arms. This honour he obtained. Besides his title of Africanus Minor, the surname of Numantinus also adorned the name of the younger Scipio, the son of Aemilius Paullus.

With the reduction of Numantia in the year 133 BC, all serious resistance in Citerior Spain was finally broken. About the same time the ulterior province was pacified, and the Roman dominion extended as far as the Atlantic Ocean. After the death of Viriathus, in the year 138 BC, the consul Decimus Junius Brutus had undertaken the command in those parts. This consul conducted a number of Lusitanians, who had served under Viriathus, to the eastern coast of Spain, where he settled them in a colony called Valentia. He appears to have been one of the most able men sent out by the republic about this time to Spain, and he fortunately remained in command for five years. Instead of pursuing the armed bands into the mountain ravines, as his predecessors had so often done to their own destruction, he attacked only the towns, and, by a generous treatment of those who surrendered voluntarily, brought into his power the whole country as far as the Durius, and even beyond it. For the first time the Romans now obtained a footing in the most north-westerly corner of Spain, inhabited by the Gallicci, a people whose name the country has retained to this day. Brutus was less successful after the misfortune of Mancinus before Numantia, for he took part in the unjust and fatal expedition of Aemilius Lepidus against the Vaccraans. Occasionally also some tribes revolted who had submitted reluctantly. But, on the whole, the resistance of the Spanish nation was broken, and when, in the year 132, Decimus Junius Brutus, surnamed ‘Gallaecus,’ and P. Cornelius Scipio, surnamed ‘Numantinus,’ celebrated their triumph, the succeeding governors of Citerior and Ulterior Spain had no longer to wage war, but merely to keep the people submissive and quiet. The legions had not indeed penetrated into the mountains of Asturia, and there some of the Spanish tribes remained untouched by the Roman yoke up to the time of Augustus. But in the rest of the peninsula the Roman language and customs rapidly gained ground, and before long Italian culture took deep root in the country.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CONQUEST OF NORTHERN ITALY. THE WARS WITH THE GAULS, LIGURIANS, AND ISTRIANS.