, on the point of victory, was to fail also.

Under Hamilcar's son-in-law, Hasdrubal, the work of training the army,
encouraging agriculture, and fostering trade was carried on as before.
It was not long before Hasdrubal made his young brother-in-law commander
of the cavalry, and often sought counsel from him in any perplexity.
Hannibal was much beloved, too, by his soldiers of all nations, and to
the end they clung to him through good and ill. He gave back their
devotion by constant care for their comfort--very rare in those
days--seeing that they were fed and warmed before entering on a hard
day's fighting, and arranging that they had proper time for rest. To the
Iberians he was bound by special ties, for before he quitted Spain for
his death-struggle with Rome he married a Spanish princess, little
thinking, when he started northwards in May 218 B.C., that he was
leaving her and her infant son behind him for ever.

* * * * *

All this time Rome had been growing both in her influence and her
dominions, when for a while her very existence was threatened by the
sudden invasion of seventy thousand Gauls, who poured in from the north.
They were defeated in a hard-fought battle and beaten back, but the
struggle with the barbarians was long and fierce, and Rome remained
exhausted. Her attention was occupied with measures needful for her own
defence and in raising both men and money, and except for warning the
Carthaginians not to cross the Ebro, she left them for a time pretty
much to themselves, thinking vainly that, as long as her navy gave her
command of the sea, she had no need to trouble herself about affairs in
Spain or Africa. Indeed, after the severe strain of the Gallic war, the
Roman senate thought that they were in so little danger either from
Carthage or from Greece that their troops might take a sorely needed
rest, and the army was disbanded.

This was Hannibal's chance, and with the siege and fall of the Spanish
town of Saguntum in 218 B.C. began the second Punic war.

* * * * *

For years the young general had been secretly brooding over his plans,
and had prepared friends for himself all along the difficult way his
army would have to march. Unknown to Rome, he had received promises of
help from most of the tribes in what is now the province of Catalonia,
from Philip of Macedon, ruler in the kingdom of Alexander the Great, and
from some of the