NUMANTIAN WAR.--The intolerable oppression of the provinces occasionally provoked resistance. It was in _Spain_ that the Romans found it most difficult to quell the spirit of freedom. The _Lusitanians_ in the territory now called Portugal, under a gallant chieftain, _Viriathus_, maintained for nine years a war in which they were mostly successful, and were finally worsted only in consequence of the perfidious assassination of their leader (149-140). The _Celtiberians_, whose principal city, _Numantia_, was on the upper _Douro_, kept up their resistance with equal valor for ten years (143-133). On one occasion a Roman army of twenty thousand men was saved from destruction by engagements which the Senate, as after the surrender at the Caudine Forks, repudiated. In 133, after a siege of eighteen months, Numantia was taken by _Scipio Africanus Æmilianus_. It was hunger that compelled the surrender; and the noblest inhabitants set fire to the town, and slew themselves, to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy. PERGAMON.--More subservience the Romans found in the East. In the same year that the desperate resistance of the _Numantians_ was overcome, _Attalus III_., king of _Pergamon_, an ally of Rome, whose sovereignty extended over the greater part of _Asia Minor_, left his kingdom and all his treasures, by will, to the Roman people. There was a feeble struggle on the part of the expectant heir, but the Romans formed the larger part of the kingdom into a province. _Phrygia Major_ they detached, and gave to _Mithridates IV_., king of _Pontus_, who had helped them in this last brief contest. PERIOD IV. THE ERA OF REVOLUTION AND OF THE CIVIL WARS. (_146-31 B.C_.) CHAPTER I. THE GRACCHI: THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR: MARIUS AND SULLA (146-78 B.C.).