last they set fire to the city, and every man, woman and child perished by the flames or in some other way.

Appian simply says that during the time which Scipio allowed, many of the Numantini killed themselves in various ways, the Roman waiting patiently while the bloody work was going on. On the third day the survivors came out, a horrible spectacle; men covered with filth, their hair and nails grown to a great length, foul in smell, and clothed in dirty rags as foul as themselves. It was a piteous sight to see, and fearful to look on, for the men stared wildly. Passion, long suffering and their unnatural food had made them more like wild beasts than men. Fifty Numantini were selected for Scipio's triumph, the rest were sold and the city was destroyed by the authority of Scipio, so far as we know, without any order from Rome. The lands of Numantia were given to their neighbours. There is a complete contradiction between this story and the statement that all the Numantini perished. But if all the Numantini in the town did perish, Scipio might easily find fifty men for his triumph among the prisoners that he had in his camp.

All the antient writers dwell on the brave resistance of this warlike people, who according to the highest estimate had not more than eight thousand men to oppose to the sixty thousand of Scipio, and often gave him the opportunity of fighting. But Scipio, says Appian, knew more of military science than his enemies: he would not fight with men who were as savage as wild animals. He tamed them by hunger, which nothing can resist. It was indeed the only way of subduing the Numantini; and by famine only were they finally vanquished. There is not on record a more signal instance of the desperate resistance of a besieged town, or of cool, calculating and inexorable purpose in a general who had resolved to destroy his enemies at the least cost to his

own army.

On the fall of Numantia, pursuant to a common Roman practice, ten senators were sent into Spain to settle the affairs of the two provinces and make such regulations as would secure the conquests of Brutus and Scipio. The Romans

4

rejoiced over the ruin of a city which had long resisted their power, and whenever the great deeds of Scipio were mentioned, the conquest of Numantia was coupled with the destruction of Carthage. Yet Carthage was a powerful state, richer than Rome through her great commerce, and for a long time her superior in arms both by land and sea; and Numantia was only a mountain fortress, the capital of a small, but warlike people. The position of Numantia certainly made it a dangerous neighbour to the Roman possessions in Spain, an obstacle to the extension of the Roman power in the northwest part of the peninsula, and a perpetual menace to the two provinces. The frequent defeats that Rome had suffered from the Numantini and their obstinate resistance to Roman dominion made it a point of honour to erase for ever from the face of the earth a town before which the Roman arms had so often been disgraced. Yet Rome had only one man, who was able to do the work; and it cost him fifteen months of incessant toil. The destruction of Numantia and the new settlement of Spain secured the tranquillity of the two Roman provinces against any serious danger, though the western and north-western frontiers were occasionally disturbed by predatory excursions. But Spain was from this time one of the most prosperous of the Roman provinces, and it became more Roman than any of the foreign possessions of the Republic. It was a great resort of Italian capitalists who were attracted by the mineral wealth and the agricultural products of the country, corn and wool. Rich towns grew up, and a large Italian population was established, particularly in the south; and to the present day the language, the manners and even the heathen Christianity of Spain retain a living evidence of the successful Romanizing of the peninsula.

In B.C. 132 Scipio had a triumph for the conquest of Numantia. This was his second triumph. The first was for the conquest of Carthage, and the second was in the fourteenth year after the first. There is no monument recorded to have been erected by Scipio. He had not enriched himself in Spain. During the siege of Numantia it is said that Antiochus King of Syria sent men to make rich presents to Scipio. He wished to gain the favour of the Romans by

bribing the first citizen of Rome. Roman generals often received such presents, but Scipio refused to accept these in private. He ordered the quaestor to enter every thing in his books, and he declared that he should employ the king's bounty in rewarding the bravest of his men. Cicero says that it was Attalus King of Pergamum who sent these presents, but Cicero may have made a mistake, as he often did.

Eutropius records the triumphs of Brutus and Scipio in the same passage, mentioning that of Brutus first. We cannot conclude from this that Brutus and Scipio triumphed in the same year; nor does it appear how long Brutus remained in Spain after B.C. 136, if he did remain after that year. Brutus got money in Spain, and he applied part of it to the erection of a temple and other public buildings. The entrances to these buildings were adorned with verses, the composition of the poet L. Attius a friend of Brutus, who, like many of the Roman generals, was a man of letters and no mean

orator.

CHAPTER VIII.

DOMESTIC EVENTS.

B.C. 142-135.

THE domestic events of Roman history are more instructive than the wars, but unfortunately they are very imperfectly known. Such however as we can collect are worth recording, for they show us what the Romans were at home.

L. Hostilius Tubulus was one of the praetors of the year B.C. 142, and his special commission was to inquire into and punish assassination (de sicariis). It seems that in those days as now the use of the knife or dagger was common at Rome, either in quarrels, or when the assassins were also thieves and robbers. Tubulus was charged with the high offence of taking bribes in the discharge of his office. There was not yet any mode of proceeding before a regular court in the case of a magistrate committing such an offence. The tribune P. Mucius Scaevola proposed a rogatio to the Tributa Comitia, to the effect that inquiry should be made into the charge against Tubulus; and the popular assembly passed a Lex (privilegium) that the Senate should give the consul Cn. Servilius Caepio (B.c. 141) a special commission to hear and inquire. Tubulus left Rome when Caepio was going to begin his inquiry, which shows that the Romans had no way of securing the presence of such an offender at his trial. Tubuius hoped to escape by retiring into exile, as the Romans called it, that is, leaving the territory of Rome and retiring to another community, and such an exile was not unusual. I do not know how far we can trust Asconius in his commentary on the fragments of Cicero's oration for M. Scaurus,

when he tells us that for his many crimes Tubulus was sent for from his place of exile, and that he took poison to prevent what he expected, his execution in prison.

In this year also there was a signal example of Roman justice, which Livy has recorded (Ep. 54). D. Junius Silanus was a son of T. Manlius Torquatus, but he had been adopted by D. Junius Silanus. The adopted son was praetor in B.C. 142 and was sent to govern the province of Macedonia. The Macedonians by their commissioners at Rome charged the praetor before the Senate with robbing them. The praetor was liable to be prosecuted under the Lex Calpurnia, but T. Manlius asked and obtained permission from the Senate to inquire first into the charges against his son. The Epitome states that Torquatus heard the cause in his own house, condemned his son, and renounced him, if that is the meaning of 'abdicavit' in the Epitome. The young man hung himself, and the father not only refused to attend the funeral, but continued his practice of waiting at home to give his advice to those who consulted him, for Torquatus was learned in the law, a jurisconsultus, as the Romans named him. The sentence, as Valerius reports it, was that Torquatus declared Silanus unworthy of the Republic and of his father's house, and ordered him to quit his presence. Valerius adds that Torquatus discharged the duty of a grave and honest judge, that the state was vindicated and Macedonia avenged. The story is probably true in the main facts, but it is miserably distorted by the ignorance of Valerius and Livy's epitomator. Torquatus had no authority over Silanus, who had by adoption become legally the son of another; and if the praetor was still in the Patria Potestas, his father was Silanus. This therefore is not an example of a Roman father's authority and of a domestic tribunal, as some have supposed. Nor was it a trial, for the Lex Calpurnia provided in such a case both the form of trial and fixed the penalty. The sentence of Torquatus, as it is reported, shows this, for it was not a sentence, but an expression of his opinion on the guilt of Silanus, which he might have pronounced without asking the permission of the Senate. The permission of the Senate to inquire, if it was asked and granted, only showed their