s, who were now making
a systematic endeavor to subdue the whole country, laid siege to Ataspa;
and although the details of the investment of the city are far from
complete, the imperfect records of the event show that the force of the
enemy was so overwhelming that the inhabitants of the ill-fated city saw
at once the futility of a prolonged resistance and resolved to do or die
without delay. Accordingly, a small guard was left behind to kill the
women and children and set fire to the town, and the rest of the doughty
little garrison, with banners waving and bugles sounding in defiance,
sallied forth from the city gates, and each man went to his death with
his face to the enemy. The thrilling tale of the final capture of the
city of Numantia by Scipio Africanus furnishes but further proof of this
indomitable courage of the early Spaniards. After a siege and blockade
of sixteen months, the Numantians, threatened by famine, and unable to
secure terms of honorable capitulation, decided that death was better
than the horrors of Roman slavery; and so they killed each other in
their patriotic zeal, wives and daughters perishing at the hands of
their fathers and their husbands, and the last man, after setting fire
to the town, threw himself into the flames. When the Roman conquerors
marched through the stricken city they could discover nothing but "ruin,
blood, solitude, and horror." By B. C. 72 practically all of Spain had
submitted to the Romans, but Pompey found to his surprise that the old
Spanish spirit was not entirely dead when he attempted to take
possession of the town of Calahorra on the Ebro. The details of the
affair almost pass belief. As usual, the defence was dogged; and when
the town was threatened with famine, it is said that the men not only
killed the women and children, but actually salted their flesh and
stored it for future consumption! This was not mere savagery, it was
fanatic devotion to a patriotic principle, and there is naught to show
that the deed was done under protest from the victims.

The superior organization of the Romans was bound to conquer, however,
in the end, and by the time of Julius Caesar the whole country had been
subjected. This gradual supremacy of the Romans was accompanied by a
gradual dying out of those early, sturdy virtues which had so marked the
Spanish people. Life in that pre-Christian era had been rude and
uncouth; there was little education or refinement; but there was a