| Located in northeastern Spain, the Celtiberian city of Numantia was besieged and destroyed in 133 BC by the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus. Due to its inhabitants' heroic resistance to the Romans both before and during the siege, Numantia earned a legendary status in Western lore. Recent academic literature has attempted to collate and analyze the many stories regarding Numantia, but has paid scanty attention to Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The present work, by contrast, makes a special examination of those periods. It shows not only that the story of Numantia was known and disseminated throughout the time periods in question, but that the literati knew it well enough to relate it to current events and concerns. Challenging traditional scholarly paradigms that dismiss the Middle Ages as unenlightened, this thesis argues that at least in the case of Numantia, an Antique intellectual tradition was resuscitated and enriched by the activities of the monk-scholars. |
