plan they ought above all, when the war had been
practically opened by Hannibal's attack on Saguntum in the beginning
of 535, to have thrown a Roman army into Spain before the town fell;
but they neglected the dictates of interest no less than of honour.
For eight months Saguntum held out in vain: when the town passed into
other hands, Rome had not even equipped her armament for landing in
Spain. The country, however, between the Ebro and the Pyrenees was
still free, and its tribes were not only the natural allies of the
Romans, but had also, like the Saguntines, received from Roman
emissaries promises of speedy assistance. Catalonia may be reached by
sea from Italy in not much longer time than from Cartagena by and: had
the Romans started, like the Phoenicians, in April, after the formal
declaration of war that had taken place in the interval, Hannibal
might have encountered the Roman legions on the line of the Ebro.

Hannibal on the Ebro

At length, certainly, the greater part of the army and of the fleet
was got ready for the expedition to Africa, and the second consul
Publius Cornelius Scipio was ordered to the Ebro; but he took time,
and when an insurrection broke out on the Po, he allowed the army that
was ready for embarkation to be employed there, and formed new legions
for the Spanish expedition. So although Hannibal encountered on the
Ebro very vehement resistance, it proceeded only from the natives;
and, as under existing circumstances time was still more precious to
him than the blood of his men, he surmounted the opposition after some
months with the loss of a fourth part of his army, and reached the
line of the Pyrenees. That the Spanish allies of Rome would be
sacrificed a second time by that delay might have been as certainly
foreseen, as the delay itself might have been easily avoided; but
probably even the expedition to Italy itself, which in the spring of
536 must not have been anticipated in Rome, would have been averted
by the timely appearance of the Romans in Spain. Hannibal had by no
means the intention of sacrificing his Spanish "kingdom," and throwing
himself like a desperado on Italy. The time which he had spent in
the siege of Saguntum and in the reduction of Catalonia, and the
considerable corps which he left behind for the occupation of the
newly-won territory between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, sufficiently
show that, had a Roman army disputed the possession of Spain with him,
he wo