For the incidents from ancient Spanish history with which this Canto opens, the reader is referred to Livy (lib. xxi. et Epit.) or to Ferguson’s _Roman Republic_, where a full account will be found of the ever-memorable Sieges of Saguntum and Numantia. The ruins of Saguntum (Liv. loc. cit.) or Sagunthus (Sil. Ital. lib. i.) are still visible on the sea coast, a little to the north of Valencia. The site of Numantia, having a much more central position, a few miles north of Soria, capital of the small province of that name in the eastern part of Old Castile, is more conjectural than that of Sagunthus. The name of Numantia is erroneously spelled “Numantium” in Mr. Lockhart’s _Ancient Spanish Ballads_, a work of extraordinary merit, notwithstanding a few inaccuracies. The particulars of the siege of Numantia are to be found in the 57th _Epitome_ of Livy’s lost books. The Moorish invasion under Tarik, the fall of Roderick, and the struggles of Pelayo, are described or alluded to by Byron, Scott, and Southey. The scene in the Vale of Covadonga is one of the finest passages in the latter’s poem of _Roderick_, where huge masses of rock are hurled down on the advancing Moorish host at the signal of the following words pronounced by the heroine: --“IN THE NAME OF GOD! FOR SPAIN AND VENGEANCE!” Southey, _Roderick_. book xxiii. The fight at Roncesvalles is the most memorable in the entire range of Romantic History, and has been alluded to, amongst other poets, by Pulci, Ariosto, Milton, Scott, and Lockhart. The siege of Zaragoza will be found described in detail in a succeeding canto. The ferocity displayed by the Moors in their invasion appears to have been not at all exaggerated by the Spanish chroniclers, and it is curious that this fierceness of aspect should have been noticed many centuries before by Horace: Acer et Mauri peditis cruentum Vultus in hostem. _Carm._ i. 2. The modern representations of Abd-el-Kader’s warriors by French artists square with the ancient notions of the Moorish ferocity of aspect. I myself have seen at Tangier and Gibraltar for the most part fine-looking men, but certainly with a tinge of ferocity, and here and therewith an expression worthy the “truculentus Maurorum vultus.” The introduction of Mohammedanism seems to have altered nothing in this respect, for in the days of Julius Cæsar, as Horace here attests, the same physiognomy was apparent; and Suetonius, speaking of the war between Cæsar and Juba, king of Mauritania, represents even the Roman legions as affrighted: “Famâ hostilium copiarum perterritos ... expectatio adventûs Jubæ terribilis.” _cap. 66._