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GARRAY (Town) SORIA
Numantia (Muela de Garray) Soria, Spain.
Site 7 km N of Soria. The cultural sequence on the hill is as follows: 1) Material
from the final phase of the Neolithic Age and from the Copper Age; 2) Iron Age
occupation, with a later castrum dating from the 4th-3d c. B.C., possibly beginning
ca. 850 B.C.; 3) Celtiberian Numancia, of the Arevaci, from the beginning of the
3d c. to 133 B.C.; 4) Roman town of the Augustan age, rebuilt after being abandoned
for a century and lingering on to the end of the 4th c.; 5) Visigoth town or perhaps
merely isolated buildings. Some of these phases may have included destruction
and reconstruction; this certainly occurred with the invasion of the Franks and
the Alamanni in the 3d c.
The fame of Numantia comes from its ten years of sustained and successful
struggle against the Roman armies, a struggle which actually began in 153 and
ended with the destruction and burning of the town in 133. The primary source
is Appian, who obtained his information from Polybios, a friend and chronicler
of Scipio and an eyewitness of the siege; also L. Anneus Florus and many others
(Diodorus Siculus, Livy, Dio Cassius, Frontinus, Paulus Orosius, and later Pliny
and Strabo).
The history of Numantia is linked to the insurrections of the Celtiberians
against the abuses of the Romans: the first of importance was in 197, which caused
Cato to attack the towns of the Meseta; disturbances again occurred in 193 when
the Arevaci helped the Vetones, Vaccaei, and Lusitani, causing Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus to attack them in 180. He defeated them near the Moncayo and reached
a peace agreement which lasted until 154, the date of the great rising of the
Celtiberians and the Lusitani. The insurrection began in Segeda (Belmonte), and
Q. Fulvius Nobilior moved against it with an army of 30,000 men. The Belli and
the Titi took refuge in Numantia with their chieftain Caros. Nobilior razed Segeda
and in August 153 advanced on Numantia. He was fiercely attacked by the Celtiberians,
defeated at Uxama (Osma) and Ocilis, and forced to take refuge in the Renieblas
camp, where he spent the winter of 153-152 B.C. He relinquished his command to
his successor, M. Claudius Marcellus, who skillfully pacified the region. A peace
treaty was signed in 151, which lasted until 143, despite the atrocities of Lucullus
at Cauca (Coca) and elsewhere. In 144 the Viriathus rising ended in a peace agreement;
Q. Caecilius Metellus, after conquering Contrebia, the Lusitanian capital, and
the tribes in the Jalon valley, laid waste the territory of the Vaccaei and attacked
the Arevaci who took refuge in Numantia and Termantia (142). The war was resumed
in 137 by C. Hostilius Mancinus, who was roundly defeated and capitulated, but
the Senate again refused to recognize the peace agreement and left the Roman general
to the mercy of the Numantians, naked, shackled, and on his knees before the walls
of the town.
Finally in 134 Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus reorganized the
demoralized army, seized supplies from the Vaccaei, and blockaded the hill town
with a circumvallation 9 km long, supported by six camps, with wall, ditch, and
towers. Against the 10,000 Numantians, of which only 4000 were under arms, Scipio
deployed 60,000 men, elephants, slingers, and Jugurtha's Numidian archers, cavalry
furnished by Spanish auxiliaries, and 300 catapults. But it was hunger which finally
defeated Numantia. Scipio refused to accept any terms other than unconditional
surrender and the laying down of arms, so the defenders burned the town and most
of them killed themselves. Only a few surrendered. Numantia was reduced to ashes
in the summer of 133, after a nine-month siege, and reconstruction of the town
was forbidden. In the triumph Rome gave to Scipio in 132, so poor was Numantia
that only seven denarii could be distributed to each soldier.
The Muela de Garray is a hill 67 m high, protected by the Douro and
the Tera, which meet at its foot to the W, and by the Merdancho (Merdancius) on
the S; the N, S, and especially the W slopes are precipitous, while the E slope
is gentle. According to Appian and Orosius the perimeter of the town of 150 ha
was 4400 m, but excavations have given axes of 310 and 720 m and an area of ca.
24 ha. The center of the Celtiberian town lay slightly W of the crest of the hill:
two long streets parallel to the main axis were crossed at right angles by 11
others, with steps at the intersections. A street parallel to the wall surrounded
the urban complex, and the central part and the first two ring streets appear
to be the oldest. The trapezoidal wall, built of boulders, is 3.4 m thick at its
base and still stands to a height of 2 m, backed by houses facing inwards; excavations
have unearthed two gates, simple openings in the wall. The streets were paved
with small cobblestones but repaired with larger ones; they had raised sidewalks
and stepping stones for crossing the gutter. The houses were arranged in rectangular
blocks with exterior dry pebblestone walls; the surviving houses are Roman, with
a cellar or storeroom, and one or two stories high. On the S slope there are two
small circles of large stones, assumed to be platforms on which the dead were
exposed (Silius Italicus, Elianus).
The Roman streets are clearly built over the Celtiberian ones, and
usually separated from them by a layer of debris and ashes. In some cases they
have been regularized and widened, and the pavement consists of large well-joined
slabs. In the so-called first street was discovered the remains of a temple, at
the place thought to be a forum of modest proportions and design. Numantia was
undoubtedly reconstructed in the Augustan period as a town with ius peregrinum
for the subjected Celtiberians, to protect the road from Asturica Augusta to Caesar-augusta.
It is difficult to distinguish the Roman houses from earlier ones of the native
type. They have no mosaic pavements or drains but have regular two-course ashlar
walls bound with clay; in addition to the usual roofs of wood and boughs, tegulae,
imbrices, and antefixes have been found; the Celtiberian silos of the houses were
replaced by cisterns for collecting runoff water. Numantia may have had an amphitheater
or theater on the N slope, of which only the cavea can be seen. There are also
remains of large houses: one with a caldarium may have been a public bath.
On the surrounding hills were built the Roman camps: that on the Atalaya
de Renieblas, 8 km away, was reconstructed five times and remains of all the reconstructions
survive (Cato in 195, 193-181, Nobilior in 153 m accordance with the Vitruvian
model, Mancinus in 137, and Scipio; the last occupation was in 75-74 in the wars
between Sertorius and Pompey). Penarredonda, on the S, has well-defined ruins,
what is assumed to be the camp of Maximus with cavalry quarters and the houses
of the tribunes; there are remains on the Castillejo, on the N of the camps of
Marcellus (ruins of the praetorium and the house of the tribune), Pompey, and
Scipio, some remains of the catapult platform at Valdeborron, on the E, and walls
of the forts of Travesadas, Dehesilla, Alto Real, el Molino, Vega, and Saledilla,
some of which perhaps were reused Celtiberian settlements.
All these camps have yielded remains of weapons, projectiles, ornaments,
for the most part Celtiberian, as is the pottery. This is basically wheel-turned,
smoked, painted pottery with animated scenes, many in the Iron Age tradition,
and terra sigillata. Bronze fibulae, necklaces, rings, belt buckles, surgical
instruments, and needles have also been found, and clay slingshots, few weapons,
trumpets, horns, clay nozzles, an occasional iron tool, circular grindstones,
Hispano-Roman and Imperial coins. The finds are in the Numantia Museum, the National
Archaeological Museum in Madrid, and the museums of Mainz and Bonn.
A. Beltran, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Jan 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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