Sempronius Gracchus, who was greatly respected by
the Spaniards for his father's sake, should become responsible for the
execution of the treaty. The Senate refused to ratify it, and went
through the hypocritical ceremony of delivering over Mancinus, bound and
naked, to the enemy. But the Numantines, like the Samnites in a similar
case, declined to accept the offering.

The Numantine war continued in the same disastrous manner to the Roman
arms, and the people now called upon Scipio Africanus to bring it to a
conclusion. We have already traced the career of this eminent man till
the fall of Carthage. In B.C. 142 he was Censor with L. Mummius. In the
administration of the duties of his office he followed in the footsteps
of Cato, and attempted to repress the growing luxury and immorality of
his contemporaries; but his efforts were thwarted by his colleague. He
vainly wished to check in the people the appetite for foreign conquests;
and in the solemn prayer which he offered at the conclusion of the
lustrum he changed the usual supplication for the enlargement of the
Republic into one for its preservation. He was now elected Consul a
second time, and was sent into Spain in B.C. 134. His first efforts were
directed, as in Africa, to the restoration of discipline in the army,
which had become disorganized and demoralized by every kind of
indulgence. Two remarkable men served under Scipio in this war. Marius,
afterward seven times Consul, and the Numidian prince Jugurtha. Having
brought his troops into an effective condition, Scipio, in the following
year, proceeded to lay siege to Numantia. The town was defended by its
inhabitants with the courage and perseverance which has pre-eminently
distinguished the Spaniards in all ages in the defense of their walled
towns. It was not till they had suffered the most dreadful extremities
of famine, eating even the bodies of the dead, that they surrendered the
place (B.C. 133). Fifty of the principal inhabitants were selected to
adorn Scipio's triumph; the rest were sold as slaves, and the town was
leveled to the ground. He now received the surname of Numantinus, in
addition to that of Africanus.

During the Numantine war Rome was menaced by a new danger, which
revealed one of the plague-spots in the Republic. We have already had
occasion to describe the decay of the free population in Italy, and the
great increase in the number of slaves from the foreign conquests of the
state.[59] As