Numantia

Numantia, the chief town of the Celtiberian people called Arevaci, in Hispania Tarraconensis, was situated on a steep hill on the Durius (Douro), in the neighbourhood of the present Soria in Old Castile. The site is probably marked by the present Puente de Guarray. Numantia is celebrated for the heroic resistance which it made to the Romans. After a siege of fifteen months, in the course of which famine and the sword had left alive very few of its 8000 brave defenders, it was taken and destroyed by Scipio the younger, 134 B.C. Scipio's army numbered no fewer than 60,000 men.