the
struggle was more earnest. Its progress was marked by the singular
vicissitudes incidental to the peculiar nature of the country and the
habits of the people. The farmers and shepherds, who inhabited the
beautiful valley of the Ebro and the luxuriantly fertile Andalusia as
well as the rough intervening highland region traversed by numerous
wooded mountain ranges, could easily be assembled in arms as a general
levy; but it was difficult to lead them against the enemy or even to
keep them together at all. The towns could just as little be combined
for steady and united action, obstinately as in each case they bade
defiance to the oppressor behind their walls. They all appear to have
made little distinction between the Romans and the Carthaginians;
whether the troublesome guests who had established themselves in the
valley of the Ebro, or those who had established themselves on the
Guadalquivir, possessed a larger or smaller portion of the peninsula,
was probably to the natives very much a matter of indifference; and
for that reason the tenacity of partisanship so characteristic of
Spain was but little prominent in this war, with isolated exceptions
such as Saguntum on the Roman and Astapa on the Carthaginian side.
But, as neither the Romans nor the Africans had brought with them
sufficient forces of their own, the war necessarily became on both
sides a struggle to gain partisans, which was decided rarely by solid
attachment, more usually by fear, money, or accident, and which, when
it seemed about to end, resolved itself into an endless series of
fortress-sieges and guerilla conflicts, whence it soon revived with
fresh fury. Armies appeared and disappeared like sandhills on the
seashore; on the spot where a hill stood yesterday, not a trace of
it remains today. In general the superiority was on the side of
the Romans, partly because they at first appeared in Spain as the
deliverers of the land from Phoenician despotism, partly because of
the fortunate selection of their leaders and of the stronger nucleus
of trustworthy troops which these brought along with them. It is
hardly possible, however, with the very imperfect and--in point of
chronology especially--very confused accounts which have been handed
down to us, to give a satisfactory view of a war so conducted.

Successes of the Scipios
Syphax against Carthage

The two lieutenant-governors of the Romans in the peninsula, Gnaeus
and Publius Scipio--both o