Retogenes of Numantia

Retogenes Caraunius was a Celtiberian warrior of Numantia who broke out of the Roman siege to seek help, and is known through a single passage of Appian. Numantia was a hill fort in the upper Duero valley in what is now Soria, and it had resisted Rome for twenty years, destroying several consular armies and forcing a treaty that the Senate repudiated. In 134 BC Scipio Aemilianus was elected consul specifically to end the war. He refused battle, and instead built a ring of some nine kilometres of ditch, rampart and towers around the town with seven camps, blocked the river with beams studded with blades, and settled down to starve it out with around sixty thousand men against perhaps four thousand defenders. Appian records that when the town was near the end, Retogenes and five companions crossed the works at night with a folding scaling ladder, killed the sentries, and rode to the neighbouring Arevaci towns to beg for help. Every town refused, fearing Roman reprisals. One place, Lutia, had young men willing to go; the elders informed Scipio, who arrived within hours and had the hands cut off four hundred of them. Numantia surrendered after eight months. Most of the population had died of starvation and many killed themselves rather than be taken; about fifty survivors walked in Scipio's triumph and the rest were sold, and the site was razed. The episode became the founding story of Spanish resistance, treated as such by Cervantes in his play The Siege of Numantia and by later nationalists.

• Lived: 180 BCE – 133 BCE
• Nationality: Celtiberian
• Roles: chieftain, defender