A gentle start and no hangover! We said our goodbyes to
Larry and Lorraine and hope that they will be able to visit us when they are in
England. Although they are based in Norfolk, Lorraine’s son is based in Taunton
in our wonderful home county of Somerset, so we are on their route.
We had two archaeological sites on our list for today –
Numancia and Clunia. Numancia (also known as Numantia), just north of Soria,
appeared to be the more major site and was the first one that we came to. It
was actually a small settlement on a hill but is famous because of a long siege
that took place here. The small hill was an Iron Age hill fort and the capital
of the Arevaci, a Celtiberian tribe. The Arevaci did not take kindly to Roman
rule and between 153BC and 133BC they had a number of clashes including a
failed Roman siege in 153 and the defeat of a force of 20,000 Romans in 137 – a
very impressive feat given that Numancia only had a population of 4,000 to
8,000. In 134BC the Romans lost patience and the Senate instructed that
Numancia should be destroyed. The Romans turned up with 30,000 troops,
surrounded the town and built a 9 km fence enclose it. The Arevaci’s position
was hopeless but they refused to surrender. After 13 months of siege the people
decided to commit suicide rather than be sold into slavery and they set fire to
the city. This is held in awe by the Spanish people and Numancian is used as a
term to describe a brave, last ditch stand and it often used in a sports
context.
Cleverly, tall white posts have been put in position in the
countryside around the hill that mark the position of the Roman camps and the
fence that they built. It helps to understand how desperate the situation was
with the fence, two rivers between them and the Roman army who were always in view.
After the defeat of the Arevaci, the Romans took over the town and rebuilt it
so the remains visible today are all Roman although there is an excellent
reconstruction of a Celtiberian house and a reconstructed section of Arevaci
wall. The views from the site are extensive and it is easy to see why it was
chosen.
We moved on to Cluny, another Arevaci hill fort taken over
by the Romans in 75BC, although it is not absolutely certain that the Arevaci
occupied this hill or one of the neighbouring hills. We expected this site to
be smaller than Numancia but it was in fact considerably larger. A photographic
reconstruction of the site in Roman times showed a huge number of densely
packed houses that must have meant that there were many thousands living there.
Having looked at the small museum and viewed part of the audio-visual (it was
in Spanish and we were short of time), we drove on to the centre of the site.
Here we were able to walk around a very large, high status villa with lovely
mosaics, then the forum, temple and more houses. A longer walk took us to two
bath complexes. We then stopped on the drive back to the theatre to take a very
quick look at the theatre before leaving the site followed by the staff ready
to lock up!
Next stop was our campsite at Riaza on the outskirts of that
very pretty village.
Photos: Larry and Lorraine at Cascante; The reconstructed
Celtiberian house at Numancia; The posh part of Roman Numancia with the
background giving an indication of the views from the site; A group of people
were flying a drone over the site in order to obtain footage for a forthcoming documentary;
The reconstructed Arevaci defensive walls; The extensive villa at Cluny; and
one of its mosaics; The forum of Cluny with the shops on the left.
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