The century which followed Scipio's conquest was one of dire experience for Spain. A Roman army was trampling out every vestige of freedom in provinces which had known nothing else; and more than that, Roman diplomacy was making of their new possession a fighting ground for the civil war which was then raging at Rome; and partisans of Marius and of Sylla were using and slaughtering the native tribes in their own desperate struggle. Roman rule was arrogant and oppressive, Roman governors cruel, arbitrary, and rapacious, and the boasted "Roman virtue" seemed to have been left in Rome, when treaties were made only to be violated at pleasure. CHAPTER IV. As nature delights in adorning the crevices of crumbling ruins with mosses and graceful lichens, so literature has busied itself with these historic ruins; and Cervantes has made the siege of Numantia (134 B.C.)--more terrible even than that of Saguntum--the subject of a poem, in which he depicts the horrors of the famine. Lira, the heroine, answers her ardent lover Mirando in high-flown Spanish phrase, which, when summed up in plain English prose, means that she cannot listen to his wooing, because she is so hungry--which, in view of the fact that she has not tasted food for weeks, seems to us not surprising! Sertorius, whose story is told by Plutarch, affords another picturesque subject for Corneille in one of his most famous tragedies. This Roman was an adherent of Marius in the long struggle with Sylla, and while upholding his cause in Spain he won to his side the people of Lusitania (Portugal), who made him their ruler, and helped him to fight the great army of the opposing Roman faction, part of which was led by Pompey. Mithridates, in Asia Minor, was also in conflict with Sylla, and sent an embassy to Sertorius which led to a league between the two for mutual aid, and for the defense of the cause of Marius. But senators of his own party became jealous of the great elevation of Sertorius, and conspired to assassinate him at a feast to which he was invited. So ended (72 B.C.) one of the most picturesque characters and interesting episodes in the difficult march of barbarous Spain toward enlightenment and civilization. Sertorius seems to have been a great administrator as well as fighter, and must also be counted one of the civilizers of Spain. He founded a school at Osca,--now Huesca,--where he had Roman and Greek masters for the Spanish youth. And it is interesting to learn that there is to-day at that city a university which bears the title "University of Sertorius." But it is not the valor nor the sagacity of Sertorius which made him the favorite of poets; but the story of the White Hind, which he made to serve him so ingeniously in establishing his authority with the Lusitanians.