the following night stabbed him while asleep in his tent.  The Lusitanians honoured the illustrious chief by an unparalleled funeral solemnity at which two hundred pairs of champions fought in the funeral games; and still more highly by the fact, that they did not renounce the struggle, but nominated Tautamus as their commander-in-chief in room of the fallen hero.  The plan projected by the latter for wresting Saguntum from the Romans was sufficiently bold; but the new general possessed neither the wise moderation nor the military skill of his predecessor.  The expedition utterly broke down, and the army on its return was attacked in crossing the Baetis and compelled to surrender unconditionally.  Thus was Lusitania subdued, far more by treachery and assassination on the part of foreigners and natives than by honourable war.

Numantia

While the southern province was scourged by Viriathus and the Lusitanians, a second and not less serious war had, not without their help, broken out in the northern province among the Celtiberian nations.  The brilliant successes of Viriathus induced the Arevacae likewise in 610 to rise against the Romans; and for this reason the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, who was sent to Spain to relieve Maximus Aemilianus, did hot proceed to the southern province, but turned against the Celtiberians.  In the contest with them, and more especially during the siege of the town of Contrebia which was deemed impregnable, he showed the same ability which he had displayed in vanquishing the Macedonian pretender; after his two years’ administration (611, 612) the northern province was reduced to obedience.  The two towns of Termantia and Numantia alone had not yet opened their gates to the Romans; but in their case also a capitulation had been almost concluded, and the greater part of the conditions had been fulfilled by the Spaniards.  When required, however, to deliver up their arms, they were restrained like Viriathus by their genuine Spanish pride in the possession of a well-wielded sword, and they resolved to continue the war under the daring Megaravicus.  It seemed folly:  the consular army, the command of which was taken up in 613 by the consul Quintus Pompeius, was four times as numerous as the whole population capable of bearing arms in Numantia.  But the general, who was wholly unacquainted with war, sustained defeats so severe under the walls of the two cities (613, 614), that he preferred at length to procure by means of negotiations the peace which he could not compel.  With Termantia a definitive agreement must have taken place.  In the case of the Numantines the Roman general liberated their captives, and summoned the community under the secret promise of favourable treatment to surrender to him at discretion.  The Numantines, weary of the war, consented, and the general actually limited his demands to the smallest possible measure.  Prisoners of war, deserters, and hostages were delivered