The war against the Celtiberians was at first conducted with success by the Consul Q. Metellus Macedonicus, who during his Praetorship had defeated the pretender to the Macedonian throne. But the successors of Metellus experienced repeated disasters, and at length, in B.C. 137, the Consul C. Hostilius Mancinus, being entirely surrounded by the Celtiberians, was obliged to sign a peace with them, in which he recognized their independence. He only obtained these terms on condition that his Quaestor, Tib. Sempronius Gracchus, who was greatly respected by the Spaniards for his father's sake, should become responsible for the execution of the treaty. The Senate refused to ratify it, and went through the hypocritical ceremony of delivering over Mancinus, bound and naked, to the enemy. But the Numantines, like the Samnites in a similar case, declined to accept the offering. The Numantine war continued in the same disastrous manner to the Roman arms, and the people now called upon Scipio Africanus to bring it to a conclusion. We have already traced the career of this eminent man till the fall of Carthage. In B.C. 142 he was Censor with L. Mummius. In the administration of the duties of his office he followed in the footsteps of Cato, and attempted to repress the growing luxury and immorality of his contemporaries; but his efforts were thwarted by his colleague. He vainly wished to check in the people the appetite for foreign conquests; and in the solemn prayer which he offered at the conclusion of the lustrum he changed the usual supplication for the enlargement of the Republic into one for its preservation. He was now elected Consul a second time, and was sent into Spain in B.C. 134. His first efforts were directed, as in Africa, to the restoration of discipline in the army, which had become disorganized and demoralized by every kind of indulgence. Two remarkable men served under Scipio in this war. Marius, afterward seven times Consul, and the Numidian prince Jugurtha. Having brought his troops into an effective condition, Scipio, in the following year, proceeded to lay siege to Numantia. The town was defended by its inhabitants with the courage and perseverance which has pre-eminently distinguished the Spaniards in all ages in the defense of their walled towns. It was not till they had suffered the most dreadful extremities of famine, eating even the bodies of the dead, that they surrendered the place (B.C. 133). Fifty of the principal inhabitants were selected to adorn Scipio's triumph; the rest were sold as slaves, and the town was leveled to the ground. He now received the surname of Numantinus, in addition to that of Africanus.