if he had a wife, and if he had, he gave in her name, and the names and age of his children, if he had any. There was a tax imposed at some time on those above a certain age, who were not married; and it was called very inappropriately 'uxorium' or wife tax, when it ought to have been called bachelors' tax. But all this matter about the tax is very doubtful. The form in which the questions were put to the citizens seems not to have required an oath, but a declaration on honour, and perhaps the same form applied to every question put to the citizens. It is stated by Gellius that the form of the question about marriage was this, Have you, on your honour, a wife? But the Roman expression is ambiguous and might mean, Have you, to your satisfaction, a wife? A man who loved a joke being asked the question by the censor replied, Yes, I have a wife, but in truth not to my liking. The censor punished the joker for his unseasonable wit by degrading him among the aerarii. Cicero tells this story about Cato and his censorship (B.c. 184), but Gellius' authority for a story of this kind is much better than that of Cicero, who is very careless about historical facts.

Another man who happened to make a terrible yawn before the censors was going to be punished for it, but he mitigated their anger by declaring that he had offended unintentionally, and that he was subject to the infirmity which the Romans named Oscedo.

When the census was ended, it was the custom for the censors to determine by lot which of them should perform the religious ceremony called the Lustrum, with which the whole business ended. The lot fell on Mummius. It happened that at this time there was scarcity and a pestilence, a common occurrence in the annals of Rome.

CHAPTER VI.

NUMANTIA.

B.C. 143-136.

In the year B.C. 143 (chap. iv. v.) the consul Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus was sent into Spain against the Celtiberi, and he was there two years. This is generally considered the commencement of the Numantine war. There are only a few scanty notices of the campaign of Metellus. As we have seen, he fell on the Arevaci (Appian, perhaps incorrectly, writes Vaccaei) while they were busy with the harvest, and defeated them. In the second year, when he was proconsul, at the siege of Contrebia, a town whose site is uncertain, five legionary cohorts were driven from their post by the enemy. Metellus commanded them to recover the ground which they had lost and he gave orders to his army to kill every man who should again seek safety in flight. The inflexible severity of the general gave fresh spirit to the men and they drove the enemy back and recovered their position. Appian's text is probably defective in the part where he speaks of the campaigns of Metellus. Florus says that Contrebia was taken. There is recorded by Valerius an example of the humanity of Metellus at the siege of a place which he names Centobriga, and Florus apparently alludes to it under the name of Nertobriga. The engines had been brought up to a part of the wall which was weakest, and were preparing to batter it, when the townspeople placed on this very spot the sons of a man named Rhetogenes who had gone over to Metellus. The father made no opposition to the consul effecting a breach though his sons would perish, but Metellus would not take the place

F

on these terms, and he abandoned the siege. The story, which may be true, is spoiled by the addition of the compiler, who says that the clemency of Metellus gained the affection of all the Celtiberian cities and did not make many sieges necessary to reduce them under Roman dominion. But Metellus only began the Celtiberian war, and whatever success he may have had, he was recalled before he had touched Termantia and Numantia.

The consuls for the year B.c. 141 were Q. Pompeius and Cn. Servilius Caepio. Pompeius was the first man of his name who attained the consulship, and he founded the nobility of a family, which afterwards played a great part in the history of Rome. He was of mean origin according to the scandal of the times, but he had some merit as an orator, and he contrived to rise by a hard struggle to the highest honours of the state. Before his election he had been on intimate terms with P. Scipio Africanus, whose friend C. Laelius was a candidate for the consulship of B.C. 141. Pompeius is said to have promised Scipio that he would help Laelius in his election, but instead of doing this he canvassed for himself and so made Scipio his bitter enemy. He had Nearer Spain for his province, as Appian tells us and at the same time gives him the name Q. Pompeius Aulus, whereas this Pompeius was the son of Aulus (chap. iv.). Metellus hated Pompeius, and he gratified his passion at the expense of the public interest. He allowed all his men to go who chose to leave the service; he gave furloughs to all who asked for them without inquiring into reasons or fixing any time of absence: he exposed his stores to plunder by withdrawing those who were set to guard them: he ordered the bows and arrows of the Cretan archers to be broken, and would allow no fodder to be supplied to the elephants and of course they must have died. All the punishment that he had for this incredible treason was the loss of a triumph which his services had merited. Yet Appian says that Metellus delivered up to Pompeius a well-disciplined army of thirty thousand foot and two thousand horsemen. But if this was so, it was an army without a general, for Pompeius had not the military talent of Metellus. After an unsuccessful attempt on Numantia Pompeius

turned his arms against Termantia, probably the place which is named Thermeste in Livy's Epitome. There is also a Spanish town named Termes by Ptolemy and Pliny, which appears to be the same place as Appian's Termantia; and again it may be the same which Appian (Hispan. 99) mentions under the name of Termesus, and he speaks of it as a city in a strong situation and one which had always been averse to Roman dominion. The history of these Spanish campaigns, which we find so brief and incomplete in the compilers, is made still more difficult by the confusion in the Roman geography of Spain. This Termes is conjectured to be Ermita de nuestra Señora de Tiermes, but I am not aware that there is any other reason than the similarity of the names, and the fact that according to Ptolemy Termes was one of the towns of the Arevaci, whose chief city was Numantia.

Pompeius had no better fortune before Termantia. The Termantini routed the troops who were conveying supplies to the Roman general, and on the same day they made an attack on his army. The Romans were pushed to the edge of a precipice over which men and horses with their riders. were driven. The Romans passed all the night after this battle under arms, and at daybreak the enemy attacked them again. The battle lasted all day without any decisive result, and only ended when darkness came. The consul now retired to Sedetania or Edetania, the country between the Ebro and the Xucar, where he found a robber, named Tanginus, who was plundering in those parts. Pompeius defeated the robber and took many prisoners whom he sold to the merchants who followed the camp. But the dealers had a bad bargain. These men with the desperation that characterized the Iberians refused to be slaves. Some killed themselves, others killed the dealers who bought them; and others when they were embarked for the Italian or Sicilian market, attempted to bore holes in the ships and sink them. There are other stories of the resolute character of the Iberians and their horror of Roman slavery. On some occasion during the Numantine war probably, for the passage in Diodorus does not enable us to fix the time, the greater part of the captives

as they were led off by the slave-drivers, killed themselves or killed one another. A young boy with his three sisters was among the captives. While the girls exhausted by the fatigue of walking were lying asleep on the ground, the boy killed them all. He was seized before he had time to kill himself, and being asked why he had killed his sisters, he replied there was nothing left them worth living for. The boy refused to take any food and so he died. These unhappy victims of Roman greediness, when they came to the limits of their country, would throw themselves on the ground, kiss the earth with bitter lamentations, and even take up the dust in their lap to carry with them as a memorial of their native soil. The Roman soldiers were moved to compassion at the sight of this love of home in barbarian people; for the soldier, whose business is to kill, is not so unfeeling as the man who makes his profit out of war.

A history of these Spanish campaigns is almost as difficult to construct as a history of military movements in a foreign country, the geography of which is unknown. We read in Diodorus a very circumstantial account of the capture of Lanci or Lancia by Pompeius. This was one of the chief towns of the Astures, and a few miles east of the subsequent Roman station of Legio Septima or Leon. Some of the more recent Spanish geographers fix Lanci at Sollanco or Sollancia. Mariana identified it with Oviedo, which is certainly a great mistake. If Pompeius carried the war so far into the northwest of Spain, we see that the narrative of his operations in Appian is very defective, for he omits this part of the story. Appian has indeed a story of Pompeius taking a small place named Malia, which was garrisoned by the Numantini. The people of Malia rose on the garrison unexpectedly and killed them, and then gave up the town to Pompeius, who only disarmed the people and took hostages from them. Drumann observes that Appian and Diodorus manifestly speak of the same event. But the difference of name in the two places and the difference in the facts manifestly show that his assumption is unfounded. The story of Diodorus is this.

When Pompeius appeared before Lanci, four hundred