Mancinus

With unimpaired courage and increased resentment the Numantines resumed the struggle; Laenas fought against them unsuccessfully, nor was his successor Gaius Hostilius Mancinus more fortunate (617).  But the catastrophe was brought about not so much by the arms of the Numantines, as by the lax and wretched military discipline of the Roman generals and by—­what was its natural consequence—­the annually-increasing dissoluteness, insubordination, and cowardice of the Roman soldiers.  The mere rumour, which moreover was false, that the Cantabri and Vaccaei were advancing to the relief of Numantia, induced the Roman army to evacuate the camp by night without orders, and to seek shelter in the entrenchments constructed sixteen years before by Nobilior.(5) The Numantines, informed of their sudden departure, hotly pursued the fugitive army, and surrounded it:  there remained to it no choice save to fight its way with sword in hand through the enemy, or to conclude peace on the terms laid down by the Numantines.  Although the consul was personally a man of honour, he was weak and little known.  Tiberius Gracchus, who served in the army as quaestor, had more influence with the Celtiberians from the hereditary respect in which he was held on account of his father who had so wisely organized the province of the Ebro, and induced the Numantines to be content with an equitable treaty of peace sworn to by all the staff-officers.  But the senate not only recalled the general immediately, but after long deliberation caused a proposal to be submitted to the burgesses that the convention should be treated as they had formerly treated that of Caudium, in other words, that they should refuse to ratify it and should devolve the responsibility for it on those by whom it had been concluded.  By right this category ought to have included all the officers who had sworn to the treaty; but Gracchus and the others were saved by their connections.  Mancinus alone, who did not belong to the circles of the highest aristocracy, was destined to pay the penalty for his own and others’ guilt.  Stripped of his insignia, the Roman consular was conducted to the enemy’s outposts, and, when the Numantines refused to receive him that they might not on their part acknowledge the treaty as null, the late commander-in-chief stood in his shirt and with his hands tied behind his back for a whole day before the gates of Numantia, a pitiful spectacle to friend and foe.  Yet the bitter lesson seemed utterly lost on the successor of Mancinus, his colleague in the consulship, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.  While the discussions as to the treaty with Mancinus were pending in Rome, he attacked the free people of the Vaccaei under frivolous pretexts just as Lucullus had done sixteen years before, and began in concert with the general of the Further province to besiege Pallantia (618).  A decree of the senate enjoined him to desist from the war; nevertheless, under the pretext that the circumstances had meanwhile changed,