The story of this place
For two decades the Celtiberian hill-town of Numantia, near modern Soria, humiliated Rome, defeating army after army until the Senate sent Scipio Aemilianus, destroyer of Carthage, in 134 BC. He built a ring of siege walls and starved the town for months. In 133 BC, with food gone, most Numantines chose to burn their homes and kill themselves rather than be paraded and enslaved—only a handful survived to be led in triumph. 'Numantine' entered Spanish as a byword for suicidal, unyielding resistance. Cervantes dramatised the siege, and the ruins on their windswept hill became a nationalist symbol of Iberian defiance.