Qualla: Siege of Numantia

Siege of Numantia: Introduction

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CarlosVdeHabsburgo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rather than submit to Rome, they ate their dead. When that was not enough, they set their city ablaze and took their own lives, entire families together. The fall of Numantia in the summer of 133 BC was the culmination of a twenty-year humiliation for the Roman Republic, a conflict in which the mightiest military power in the ancient world repeatedly failed to subdue a single Celtiberian hilltop city in what is now the province of Soria, Spain. It took Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, the man who had destroyed Carthage, to finally end the resistance -- and even he could not defeat Numantia in battle. He had to starve it to death.

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Image: CarlosVdeHabsburgo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Siege of Numantia: The City Rome Could Not Take

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit «ВЭС». (СПб; 1914 год)., Public domain. The Numantine War was the third of the Celtiberian Wars, erupting in 143 BC when the indigenous peoples of Hispania Citerior rose against Roman expansion. For a decade, Rome sent general after general against Numantia, the principal city of the Celtiberian resistance. Each failed...

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Image: «ВЭС». (СПб; 1914 год). | Public domain

Siege of Numantia: The Siege Machine

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Scipio arrived with 20,000 Roman troops and 40,000 allied and mercenary soldiers, including Numidian cavalry and twelve war elephants led by the young Jugurtha, who would later become a formidable enemy of Rome himself. But Scipio had no intention of storming the city. He planned...

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Image: Public domain

Siege of Numantia: Rhetogenes and the Severed Hands

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antonio Guerrero, Public domain. Desperation drove the Numantines to attempt breakouts. Their greatest warrior, Rhetogenes, led a small band of men down the river past the Roman blockade in one of the siege's most daring episodes. He reached the Arevaci tribe first, but his pleas for help were ignored. At Lutia,...

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Image: Antonio Guerrero | Public domain

Siege of Numantia: Fire and Legacy

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Juan Antonio de Ribera, Public domain. When Numantia's first ambassadors asked for liberty in exchange for surrender, Scipio refused. The ambassadors were killed upon their return by their own people, who believed they had secretly bargained with Rome. Starvation consumed the city. Cannibalism followed. Families began...

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Image: Juan Antonio de Ribera | Public domain