Numantia

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Numantia
Numancia
Numancia (2).jpg
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Location of the site in Spain
Location Garray (Soria), Spain
Coordinates 41°48′34.51″N2°26′39.33″W / 41.8095861°N 2.4442583°W / 41.8095861; -2.4442583
TypeArchaeological site
History
Cultures Celtiberian
TypeNon-movable
CriteriaArchaeological site
Designated25 August 1882
Reference no.RI-55-0000001

Numantia (Spanish : Numancia) is an ancient Celtiberian settlement, whose remains are located on a hill known as Cerro de la Muela in the current municipality of Garray (Soria), Spain. [1]

Contents

Numantia is famous for its role in the Celtiberian Wars. In 153 BC, Numantia experienced its first serious conflict with Rome. After twenty years of hostilities, in 133 BC the Roman Senate gave Scipio Aemilianus Africanus the task of destroying Numantia.

History

Territory of the Celtiberi tribe with the probable locations of its sub-groups Mapa celtiberos.jpg
Territory of the Celtiberi tribe with the probable locations of its sub-groups

Numantia was an Iron Age hill fort (in Roman terminology an oppidum ), which controlled a crossing of the river Duero. Pliny the Elder counts it as a city of the Pellendones, [2] but other authors, like Strabo and Ptolemy place it among the Arevaci people. The Arevaci were a Celtiberian tribe, formed by the mingling of Iberians and migrating Celts in the 6th century BC, who inhabited an area near Numantia and Uxama.

The first serious conflict with Rome occurred in 153 BC when Quintus Fulvius Nobilior was consul. Numantia took in some fugitives from the city of Segeda, who belonged to another Celtiberian tribe called the Belli. The leader of the Belli, Carus of Segeda, managed to defeat a Roman army. The Romans then besieged Numantia, and deployed a small number of war elephants, but were unsuccessful.

In 137 BC, 20,000 Romans surrendered to the Celtiberians of Numantia (population between 4,000 and 8,000). The young Roman officer Tiberius Gracchus, as quaestor, saved the Roman army from destruction by signing a peace treaty with the Numantines, an action generally reserved for a legate.

Modern reconstruction of the Celtiberian houses in Numantia Numancia (5).jpg
Modern reconstruction of the Celtiberian houses in Numantia

The final siege of Numantia began in 134 BC. Scipio Aemilianus in command of an army of 30,000 soldiers laid siege to the city, erecting a 9 km barrier supported by towers, moats, impaling rods, and other devices. The Numantians refused to surrender and famine quickly spread through the city. After eight months most of the inhabitants decided to commit suicide rather than become slaves. A few hundred of the inhabitants decided to burn the city before surrendering after 13 months of siege.

Later history

Numantia was incorporated into the Roman Imperial province of Hispania Tarraconensis (pictured in red), AD 120. REmpire-03 Hispania Tarraconensis.png
Numantia was incorporated into the Roman Imperial province of Hispania Tarraconensis (pictured in red), AD 120.

After the destruction in 133 BC, occupation continued in the 1st century BC with a regular street plan but without great public buildings. Its decay started in the 3rd century, but was still settled in the 4th century.

Later remains from the 6th century hint of a Visigoth occupation.

Excavation and conservation of Numantia

Numantia's exact location vanished from memory, and some theories placed it in Zamora, but in 1860 Eduardo Saavedra identified the correct location in Garray, Soria. In 1882, the ruins of Numantia were declared a national monument. In 1905, the German archaeologist Adolf Schulten began a series of excavations which located the Roman camps around the city. In 1999, the Roman camps were included in a zona arqueológica, a category of the Spanish heritage register which did not exist when the hillfort was first protected. [3] Regular excavations are still going on.

Museums

Jar with three spouts (1st century B.C.) in the Museo Numantino Museo Numantino - Jarra trilobulada.jpg
Jar with three spouts (1st century B.C.) in the Museo Numantino

Many objects from the site are on display in the Numantine Museum of Soria (Spanish: Museo Numantino). This museum is also responsible for in situ displays at Numantia.

Other collections which have items from the site include the Romano-Germanic Central Museum, Mainz. (Some objects were taken by Adolf Schulten to Germany). [4]

Symbolism

The Siege of Numantia was recorded by several Roman historians who admired the sense of freedom of the ancient Iberians and acknowledged their fighting skills against the Roman legions.

In Spanish culture

Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quijote ) wrote a play about the siege, El cerco de Numancia , which stands today as his best-known dramatic work. Antonio Machado references the city in his poetry book Campos de Castilla. The poem is an ode to the countryside and peoples of rural Castile. More recently, Carlos Fuentes wrote a short story about the event, "The Two Numantias", in his collection The Orange Tree.

Several Spanish Navy ships have been named Numancia and a Sorian battalion was named batallón de numantinos. During the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalist Numancia regiment took the town of Azaña in Toledo. To erase the memory of the Republican president Manuel Azaña, they renamed it Numancia de la Sagra.

The Sorian football team is called CD Numancia.

The expression "numantine resistance" is occasionally used to refer to particularly obdurate resistance. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scipio Aemilianus</span> Roman politician and general (185–129 BC)

Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Aemilianus, known as Scipio Aemilianus or Scipio Africanus the Younger, was a Roman general and statesman noted for his military exploits in the Third Punic War against Carthage and during the Numantine War in Spain. He oversaw the final defeat and destruction of the city of Carthage. He was a prominent patron of writers and philosophers, the most famous of whom was the Greek historian Polybius. In politics, he opposed the populist reform program of his murdered brother-in-law, Tiberius Gracchus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Celtiberians</span> Ancient Celtic peoples of the Iberian Peninsula

The Celtiberians were a group of Celts and Celticized peoples inhabiting an area in the central-northeastern Iberian Peninsula during the final centuries BCE. They were explicitly mentioned as being Celts by several classic authors. These tribes spoke the Celtiberian language and wrote it by adapting the Iberian alphabet, in the form of the Celtiberian script. The numerous inscriptions that have been discovered, some of them extensive, have allowed scholars to classify the Celtiberian language as a Celtic language, one of the Hispano-Celtic languages that were spoken in pre-Roman and early Roman Iberia. Archaeologically, many elements link Celtiberians with Celts in Central Europe, but also show large differences with both the Hallstatt culture and La Tène culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soria</span> Municipality in Castile and León, Spain

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<i>The Siege of Numantia</i>

The Siege of Numantia is a tragedy by Miguel de Cervantes set at the siege of Numantia, captured and razed by Scipio Aemilianus in 133 BC.

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Numancia may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lusones</span>

The Lusones were an ancient Celtiberian (Pre-Roman) people of the Iberian Peninsula, who lived in the high Tajuña River valley, northeast of Guadalajara. They were eliminated by the Romans as a significant threat in the end of the 2nd century BC.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Numantia</span> Siege of a Celtiberian city by the Roman Republic

The Celtiberian oppidum of Numantia was attacked more than once by Roman forces, but the siege of Numantia refers to the culminating and pacifying action of the long-running Numantine War between the forces of the Roman Republic and those of the native population of Hispania Citerior. The Numantine War was the third of the Celtiberian Wars and it broke out in 143 BC. A decade later, in 133 BC, the Roman general and hero of the Third Punic War, Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, subjugated Numantia, the chief Celtiberian city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Numantine War</span> Last of the Celtiberian Wars

The Numantine War was the last conflict of the Celtiberian Wars fought by the Romans to subdue those people along the Ebro. It was a twenty-year conflict between the Celtiberian tribes of Hispania Citerior and the Roman government. It began in 154 BC as a revolt of the Celtiberians of Numantia on the Douro. The first phase of the war ended in 151, but in 143, war flared up again with a new insurrection in Numantia.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arevaci</span>

The Arevaci or Aravaci, were a Celtic people who settled in the central Meseta of northern Hispania and dominated most of Celtiberia from the 4th to late 2nd centuries BC. The Vaccaei were their allies.

Gaius Hostilius Mancinus was a politician and general of the Roman Republic. He is mostly known for his defeat against the Numantines as consul in 137 BC and the humiliating treaty he signed afterwards in order to save his army.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pellendones</span>

The Pellendones were an ancient pre-Roman Celtic people living on the Iberian Peninsula. From the early 4th century BC they inhabited the region near the source of the river Duero in what today is north-central Spain. The area comprises the north of Soria, the southeast of Burgos and the southwest of La Rioja provinces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belli</span>

The Belli, also designated Beli or Belaiscos were an ancient pre-Roman Celtic Celtiberian people who lived in the modern Spanish province of Zaragoza from the 3rd Century BC.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Numantine Museum of Soria</span>

The Numantine Museum of Soria located in Soria, Spain, focuses on the prehistory and history of the province of Soria through art and archaeology. The name chosen for the museum, which means pertaining to Numantia, reflects the historical importance of Spain's most famous hill fort, which is a few kilometres from Soria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uxama Argaela</span>

Uxama Argaela was a Celtiberian, and subsequently Roman, city located on El Castro hill, overlooking the present town of El Burgo de Osma in Soria, Spain.

The Celtiberian confederacy was a tribal federation formed around the mid-3rd century BC, by the Arevaci, Lusones, Belli and Titii, with the Arevacian city of Numantia as the federal capital.

References

  1. Keay, S., R. Mathisen, H. Sivan. "Places: 246523 (Numantia)". Pleiades. Retrieved April 30, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. Pliny. Natural History.
  3. Monumento and zona arqueológica are both types of Bien de Interés Cultural
  4. Delgado, Adrián (25 April 2017). "La Numancia inédita de Adolf Schulten". ABC (in Spanish). Madrid: Vocento . Retrieved 11 November 2018.
  5. "Numantino". Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (in Spanish) (22nd ed.). Real Academia Española. Archived from the original on 24 March 2007. Retrieved 11 November 2018.

Bibliography