ght gain means, money, and men for the
contest with a land which, even were the army ready to strike the
blow, it seemed difficult to reach and scarce possible to vanquish.
He was still a young man, little beyond thirty, but he had apparently,
when he was preparing for his expedition, a foreboding that he would
not be permitted to attain the end of his labours, or to see otherwise
than afar off the promised land. When he left Carthage he enjoined
his son Hannibal, nine years of age, to swear at the altar of the
supreme God eternal hatred to the Roman name, and reared him and his
younger sons Hasdrubal and Mago--the "lion's brood," as he called
them--in the camp as the inheritors of his projects, of his genius,
and of his hatred.

Hamilcar Proceed to Spain
Spanish Kingdom of the Barcides

The new commander-in-chief of Libya departed from Carthage immediately
after the termination of the mercenary war (perhaps in the spring of
518). He apparently meditated an expedition against the free Libyans
in the west. His army, which was especially strong in elephants,
marched along the coast; by its side sailed the fleet, led by his
faithful associate Hasdrubal. Suddenly tidings came that he had
crossed the sea at the Pillars of Hercules and had landed in Spain,
where he was waging war with the natives--with people who had done him
no harm, and without orders from his government, as the Carthaginian
authorities complained. They could not complain at any rate that he
neglected the affairs of Africa; when the Numidians once more
rebelled, his lieutenant Hasdrubal so effectually routed them that
for a long period there was tranquillity on the frontier, and several
tribes hitherto independent submitted to pay tribute. What he
personally did in Spain, we are no longer able to trace in detail.
His achievements compelled Cato the elder, who, a generation after
Hamilcar's death, beheld in Spain the still fresh traces of his
working, to exclaim, notwithstanding all his hatred of the
Carthaginians, that no king was worthy to be named by the side of
Hamilcar Barcas. The results still show to us, at least in a general
way, what was accomplished by Hamilcar as a soldier and a statesman in
the last nine years of his life (518-526)--till in the flower of his
age, fighting bravely in the field of battle, he met his death like
Scharn-horst just as his plans were beginning to reach maturity--and
what during the next eight years (527-534)