At first perfidy did not seem to prosper. Furius and his successor Calpurnius Piso made no more progress than their predecessors, and so high grew the reputation of the besieged for valour, that no one, Florus says, ever expected to see the back of a Numantine. At last, A. U. 619, the Romans, weary of the war, and anxious above all things to bring it to an end, re–elected to the office of consul Scipio Æmilianus, celebrated as the final conqueror and destroyer of Carthage, and expressly assigned Spain to him as his province, instead of suffering the two consuls to draw lots for the choice of provinces, as was the usual course. Scipio’s first care was to restore discipline in his army, which he found corrupted by luxury. With this view he expelled all the idle and profligate followers of the camp; practised his troops in all military exercises, inured them to exposure and fatigue, and when he thought the ancient tone of Roman discipline was restored, led them, not against the formidable Numantines, but against a neighbouring people. Obtaining a trifling advantage over a party of the former who had attacked his foragers, he refused to prosecute it, thinking it enough that the reputed invincibility of the Numantines was disproved. On this occasion, says Plutarch, the Numantines being reproached on their return to the city, for retiring before an enemy whom they had so often beaten, replied, “The Romans might indeed be the same sheep, but they had gotten a new shepherd.” In the ensuing winter, his army being increased to 60,000 men, Scipio determined to invest the town. Regardless of the disproportion of force, the besieged often offered battle, which he refused, preferring the slow work of famine to encountering the desperation of veteran and approved soldiers. With this view he proceeded to draw lines of circumvallation round the town; and it is said by Appian, that he was the first general who ever took that method of reducing a place, the garrison of which did not decline a battle in the open field. The town was about three miles in compass, and lay on the slope of a hill, at the foot of which ran the river Durius, now called the Douro. Around it Scipio traced a double ditch, six miles in circuit, with a rampart eight feet thick and ten feet high, not including a parapet strengthened by towers at intervals of 125 feet. The river, where it intersected the works, was effectually blocked up by chains and booms. The besieged often endeavoured to check the progress of the Romans, but the superiority of numbers, aided by restored discipline, was too much for them.