whose
errors and misconduct caused the reverses that Hasdrubal met with. This
is expressly attested by the Greek historian Polybius, who was the
intimate friend of the younger Africanus, and drew his information
respecting the Second Punic War from the best possible authorities. Livy
gives a long narrative of campaigns between the Roman commanders in
Spain and Hasdrubal, which is so palpably deformed by fictions and
exaggerations as to be hardly deserving of attention. It is clear that
in the year B.C. 208, at least, Hasdrubal outmanoeuvred Publius Scipio,
who held the command of the Roman forces in Spain, and whose object was
to prevent him from passing the Pyrenees and marching upon Italy. Scipio
expected that Hasdrubal would attempt the nearest route along the coast
of the Mediterranean, and he therefore carefully fortified and guarded
the passes of the eastern Pyrenees. But Hasdrubal passed these mountains
near their western extremity; and then, with a considerable force of
Spanish infantry, with a small number of African troops, with some
elephants and much treasure, he marched, not directly toward the coast
of the Mediterranean, but in a northeastern line toward the centre of
Gaul. He halted for the winter in the territory of the Arverni, the
modern Auvergne, and conciliated or purchased the goodwill of the Gauls
in that region so far that he not only found friendly winter quarters
among them, but great numbers of them enlisted under him, and, on the
approach of spring, marched with him to invade Italy.

By thus entering Gaul at the southwest, and avoiding its southern
maritime districts, Hasdrubal kept the Romans in complete ignorance of
his precise operations and movements in that country; all that they knew
was that Hasdrubal had baffled Scipio's attempts to detain him in Spain;
that he had crossed the Pyrenees with soldiers, elephants, and money,
and that he was raising fresh forces among the Gauls. The spring was
sure to bring him into Italy, and then would come the real tempest of
the war, when from the north and from the south the two Carthaginian
armies, each under a son of the Thunderbolt[62], were to gather together
around the seven hills of Rome.

[Footnote 62: Hamilcar was surnamed Barca, which means the Thunderbolt.
Sultan Bajazet had the similar surname of Yilderim.]

In this emergency the Romans looked among themselves earnestly and
anxiously for leaders fit to meet the perils of the coming campai