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Updated: June 1, 2025
He first served against the Celtiberians when Scipio Africanus was besieging Numantia, and he attracted the notice of his commander by his superiority in courage over all the other young soldiers, and by the readiness with which he adapted himself to the change in living which Scipio introduced among the troops, who had been corrupted by luxurious habits and extravagance.
The preceeding successes caused great depression amongst the Spanish troops, and on the following day the battalion of Numantia, numbering 650 disciplined men, deserted in a body, and joined the Chilian forces at Chancay.
Caius Marius was the name of this man, and he belonged to the commons. He was twenty-three years of age, and had risen from the low condition of a peasant to one of prominence in public affairs. Fifteen years after the fall of Numantia we find him a tribune of the people, standing for purity in the elections, against the opposition of the optimates.
Some, however, think that this name had a different origin; as follows: When Scipio was blockading Numantia, he wished to inspect not only the arms and the horses, but also the mules and waggons, in order to see in what kind of order and condition the soldiers kept them.
The thrilling tale of the final capture of the city of Numantia by Scipio Africanus furnishes but further proof of this indomitable courage of the early Spaniards.
In 133 the terrible fate of Numantia, and in 132 the merciless suppression of the Sicilian slave-revolt, warned all foes of the Republic that the sword, which the incompetence of many generals had made seem duller than of old, was still keen to smite; and except where some slave-bands were in desperate rebellion, and in Pergamus, where a pretender disputed with Rome the legacy of Attalus, every land along the shores of the Mediterranean was subject to or at the mercy of a town not half as large as the London of to-day.
What had been the doom of Viriathus? and what warning against vain valor was written on the desolate site where Numantia once had flourished? Nor was a caution wanting in scenes nearer home and more recent times.
The fall of Numantia struck at the root of the opposition that was still here and there stirring against Rome; military demonstrations and the imposition of fines sufficed to secure the acknowledgment of the Roman supremacy in all Hither Spain. The Callaeci Conquered New Organization of Spain In Further Spain the Roman dominion was confirmed and extended by the subjugation of the Lusitanians.
Whatever may have been the origin of Zamora, erroneously confounded with that of Numantia, it is not until the ninth century that the city, or frontier fortress, appears in history as an Arab stronghold, taken from the Moors and fortified anew by Alfonso I. or by his son Froila, and necessarily lost and regained by Christians and Moors a hundred times over in such terrible battles as the celebrated and much sung día de Zamora in 901.
The same fate at the same time befel the Jews, who had admitted Italian proselytes to their sabbath. In like manner Scipio had to clear the camp before Numantia from soothsayers and pious impostors of every sort. Some forty years afterwards it was even found necessary to prohibit human sacrifices.
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