Chapter V

The Calendar-Changing Celtiberians Wars

Segeda’s wall had not yet been sufficiently strengthened so the inhabitants asked to be taken into Numantia, which welcomed them as allies and friends. In the opinion of Florus, Numantia was dragged into the war unjustly. These wars changed the Roman calendar. Up to that time the year had officially began on the Ides of March (15th), on which day the war-waging consuls and administrators were appointed. By the time they got to the meseta, however, it was late June. This meant a precious time was wasted, since war was waged in spring and summer.  Rome therefore saw itself forced to bring forward its calendar to the kalendas of January (day 1). We have hence inherited the Roman calendar as dictated by the Celtiberian wars.

The Siege of Scipio

The Roman Senate, and above all the hawks within it, could no longer put up with a small town like Numantia posing so many niggling problems to an army that was sweeping all before it elsewhere in the Mediterranean, especially at a time when its expansion was stretching resources to the limit. Numantia needed to be given short shrift; a general of maximum prestige would have to be sent to deal with it once and for all. Under public pressure the Senate appointed Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the leading hawk who had acquired the highest possible prestige with his destruction of the city of Carthage. As with Marcellus, the rules were bent to make him a Consul in January 134 BCE even though the official eligibility ten-year period had not yet passed since his previous appointment.

Scipio found he had to deal with a sadly depleted army of only about 20,000 men. From Rome he could bring only 4000 volunteers plus a few men seconded by Micipsa, King of Numidia. Drawing on the economic aid of Antiochus of Syria and Attalois of Pergamon, however, he was able to recruit many mercenaries, in the end mustering a contingent of two consular armies (60,000 men). Discipline was very slack so his first task was to lick them into shape by dint of harsh training sessions meant to imbue them with efficacy, discipline and morale. According to Appian , after the campaign against the Vaccaei, in 134 BCE, Scipio moved on to winter in the region of Numantia.

After having set up his two camps nearby the city, he placed one of them (Peña Redonda) under the orders of his brother, Maximus, and took the other (Castillejo) under his own control. As the Numantines were egging on the Romans to wage battle, he preferred to shut them in and wear them down by attrition. To do so he built seven forts around the city and ordered it to be surrounded by a moat and fence.

When this work was finished, to make the bulwark even stronger, he built yet another moat a little bit further out, bristling with stakes. For good measure he then built a wall eight feet wide and ten feet high, without counting the battlements. Several arrow-launching towers were built, each one about thirty metres from the other. It proved impossible to prolong the wall over the nearby lake, so he built a causeway across it of the same height and width.

Instead of bridges over the River Douro he towered the river downstream from the union between the Merdancho and Douro, stringing from tower to tower across the river a cable hung with blades and darts (stimuli) to prevent both boats and swimmers from leaving or entering the besieged city. Nothing daunted, the irrepressible Numantines tried to break the siege on several occasions. Finally their greatest warrior Rhetogenes, accompanied by five fellow counter-attackers and five servants, managed with incredible derring-do to break the blockade on a dark night of spring 133 BCE, surprising and killing the sentries, thereafter escaping quickly on horseback.

He first went for help to the Arevaci cities, urging them to rebel anew against Rome, but his plea was rejected due to fear of Roman reprisals. Only in the city of Loutia (lying 56 km from Numantia, but in an unidentified location) did Rhetogenes muster any support from the young warriors. But the city’s Assembly of Elders got wind of the intended rebellion and tipped off Scipio, trying to head off the dreaded reprisals. But the Roman general sped to Loutia and occupied the city. He then ordered the elders to hand over all the young warriors, about 400 in all, cruelly cutting off their right hands as punishment.

Scipio was well aware that cutting off the right hand of a Celtiberian meant subjecting him to an undignified death; he could no longer wield a sword and was therefore unable to die in battle to reach the Great Beyond in company with the gods. After the Rhetogenes fiasco in Loutia the Numantines sued for peace. A five-man commission headed by the Numantine leader Avarus pleaded with Scipio “to pardon this brave, lion-hearted people, offering them lenient terms”. Scipio rejoined “that they hand over first their arms and then themselves with their city”. The Numantines were furious upon hearing this answer, killing Avarus and his companions on suspicion that they had struck a deal with Scipio to save their own skins. The worst thing was not the hunger but not being able to die fighting.

Gallery of chapter images

go on to chapter VI >>>Who Reoccupied the Cerro de La Muela After Scipio’s Destruction of Numantia?

Bibliographical references