gacity. They had raised, and trained in local wars, a large and now
veteran army. Upon his own departure, Hannibal intrusted the
government to his younger brother, Hasdrubal, who preserved toward him
to the end a loyalty and devotion which he had no reason to hope from
the faction-cursed mother-city in Africa.

At the time of his starting, the Carthaginian power in Spain was
secured from Cadiz to the river Ebro. The region between this river
and the Pyrenees was inhabited by tribes friendly to the Romans, but
unable, in the absence of the latter, to oppose a successful
resistance to Hannibal. He put them down, leaving eleven thousand
soldiers under Hanno to keep military possession of the country, lest
the Romans should establish themselves there, and thus disturb his
communications with his base.

Cnaeus Scipio, however, arrived on the spot by sea the same year with
twenty thousand men, defeated Hanno, and occupied both the coast and
interior north of the Ebro. The Romans thus held ground by which they
entirely closed the road between Hannibal and reinforcements from
Hasdrubal, and whence they could attack the Carthaginian power in
Spain; while their own communications with Italy, being by water, were
secured by their naval supremacy. They made a naval base at Tarragona,
confronting that of Hasdrubal at Cartagena, and then invaded the
Carthaginian dominions. The war in Spain went on under the elder
Scipios, seemingly a side issue, with varying fortune for seven years;
at the end of which time Hasdrubal inflicted upon them a crushing
defeat, the two brothers were killed, and the Carthaginians nearly
succeeded in breaking through to the Pyrenees with reinforcements for
Hannibal. The attempt, however, was checked for the moment; and before
it could be renewed, the fall of Capua released twelve thousand
veteran Romans, who were sent to Spain under Claudius Nero, a man of
exceptional ability, to whom was due later the most decisive military
movement made by any Roman general during the Second Punic War. This
seasonable reinforcement, which again assured the shaken grip on
Hasdrubal's line of march, came by sea,--a way which, though most
rapid and easy, was closed to the Carthaginians by the Roman navy.

Two years later the younger Publius Scipio, celebrated afterward as
Africanus, received the command in Spain, and captured Cartagena by a
combined military and naval attack; after which he took the most
extraordinary step