Some of the Celtiberian towns were protected only by their situation; this was the case at Numantia, though certainly not with any reference to Sparta on principle, for as the town had no more than 4000 armed men, such a principle would have been ill suited to them, and it would not assuredly have been any degradation to protect the town by means of fortifications. The Celtiberians, that is, the remnants of the devoted nation, afterwards re-appear in a remarkable manner in the time of Sertorius. They were not all united in their attachment to him, a singular proof of the clear and rational manner in which those Spaniards viewed their altered circumstances, although they had very great men for their leaders. They did not look backwards, and their object was neither to restore the condition of independence which had existed previously to the Hannibalian war and which it was impossible to revive, nor yet absolutely to repel the Romans. They readily availed themselves of the presence of Sertorius for the purpose of forming themselves into an Hispano-Latin nation and of acquiring a national existence, which promised a development from the actual circumstances. This is a very interesting fact, and deserves to be well pondered over: after great changes of circumstances, light sometimes dawns on men; they do not look back into the past, but set before them a fixed object suited to their circumstances, and do not follow any visionary schemes. Thus the Celtiberians were now ready to do what their ancestors a hundred years before would not have done. But they did not succeed. The fall of Sertorius and the victory of the Romans were things over which they had no control; Providence here decided the issue, and the failure does not prove that their undertaking was not wisely calculated.