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In Death, Immortality, Irenae A. Aigbedion

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“We are like an admirable, wandering Numancia, who prefers to die gradually than to admit defeat” (translated from Alfonso Guerra’s documentary, Exilio). Uttered during the fall of the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Spanish author Luis Araquistáin’s ominous phrase not only speaks to the slow death of Republican hopes while in exile, but also hearkens back to a small town in the north of Spain that existed in the second century AD. Famed for its resistance to the advancing Roman armies, Numantia fell in 133 BC to Scipio Aemilianus who led the forces of the Roman …