The Siege of Numantia (Spanish: El cerco de Numancia) is a tragedy by Miguel de Cervantes set at the siege of Numantia, captured and razed by Scipio Aemilianus in 133 BC. The play is divided into four acts, (jornadas, or "days"). The dialogue is sometimes in tercets and sometimes in redondillas, but for the most part in octaves. The work was composed circa 1582 and was apparently very successful in the years before the advent of the playwright Lope de Vega. It remained unpublished until the eighteenth-century. Since then, it has been hailed by many as a “rare specimen of Spanish tragedy” and even as the best Spanish tragedy not only from the period before Lope de Vega, but of all its literature.Some critics have seen resemblances between Cervantes' tragedy and Aeschylus's The Persians, while others reject that the play is a conventional tragedy. Some envision the play as containing epic elements or even exhibiting opposing epics: Virgil's Aeneid and Lucan's Pharsalia, while Barbara Simerka argues for generic instability and the counter-epic Source: Wikipedia (en)