Numantia, now central Spain. The Roman army of Tarraconensis was entrusted, in 134 BC, to Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, nephew of the hero of the Second Punic War who conquered Carthage and himself a general in the Third Punic War. After sacking the country of the Vaccei, he besieged Numantia in 134\u2013133 BC. The army commanded by Scipio was supplemented by a large contingent of Numidian cavalry, provided by his ally Micipsa, commanded by the king’s young nephew, Jugurtha. Scipio first worked to reassure and reorganize the army, discouraged by the stubborn and effective resistance of the rebel city; then, certain that the citadel could only be taken by starvation, he built a double ring road designed to isolate Numantia and deprive it of any external aid. The consul then worked to discourage the Iberians from aiding the rebel city, appearing with his army at the gates of the city of Lutia and forcing it to submit and hand over hostages. After nearly a year of siege (the siege of Numantia inspired Cervantes’ play, El cerco de Numancia), the starving Numantians sought a parley with Scipio, but, learning that he would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, the few men still able to fight chose to launch a final, desperate assault against the Roman fortifications. The failure of this sortie drove the survivors, according to legend, to burn the city and throw themselves into the flames. Not all, however, lost their lives; some, reduced to slavery, paraded in Rome during Scipio’s triumph. The city was razed to the ground, like Carthage a few years earlier. The bellum numantinum takes on particular importance, because it marks the full affirmation of Roman hegemony in central-northern Hispania and the definitive pacification of most of the Iberian peninsula.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Numantia, now central Spain. The Roman army of Tarraconensis was entrusted, in 134 BC, to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-616353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vg-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n