used to the local water. Many died. A foraging party was ambushed. Pompeius sent his soldiers to the towns to spend the rest of the winter and waited for his successor. Fearing that he would be held to account for his failures he approached the Numantines. The concluded a peace agreement. Pompeius demanded hostages, the prisoners, the deserters, and 30 talents of silver, part of which was to be paid in instalments. In 139 BC, when the new consul,Marcus Popillius Laenas, arrived to take over, the last instalment was being paid. Pompeius, knowing that he had made a peace the Romans considered disgraceful and without the consent of the senate, denied that he had made a deal. The Numantines proved the contrary through the testimony of the senatorial envoys and his officers. Pompeius and Numantine envoys were sent to Rome to continue the dispute there. The senate decided to continue the war. Popillius Laenas attacked the Lusones, a Celtiberian tribe close to Numantia, but did not accomplish anything and returned to Rome. In 137 BC, the consul Gaius Hostilius Mancinus lost frequent clashes with the Numantines. On false rumours that the Cantabri of northern Hispania and the Vaccaei of west-central Hispania were coming to the aid of the Numantines he panicked, left the camp and went to an empty place where a commander in the Second Celtiberian War had a camp. At dawn he was surrounded and he was without fortifications. The Numantines threatened to kill everyone if he did not make peace. He agreed terms like those made by Quintus Pompeius Aulus. This caused outrage in Rome. Another consul, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus Porcina, was sent to Hispania and Mancinus was recalled to stand trial. Plutarch said that he was "not bad as a man, but most unfortunate of the Romans as a general." Aemilius Lepidus, who wanted glory, did not wait for instructions from Rome and attacked the Vaccaei, who lived in west-central Hispania to the west of the Celtiberians, falsely accusing them of supplying the Numantines. He ravaged the countryside and started a siege of their main town, Pallantia. He persuaded Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus, his brother-in-law who had carried out counterinsurgency operations in Lusitania and Gallaecia, to join him. Messengers from Rome arrived. They said that the senate was at a loss to know what he should seek a new war and warned him not to proceed.