upon a bare hill, which did not even
afford the possibility of pitching a camp, the whole corps were cut
down or taken prisoners. As to the fate of the general himself no
certain information was ever obtained. A small division alone was
conducted by Gaius Marcius, an excellent officer of the school of
Gnaeus, in safety to the other bank of the Ebro; and thither the
legate Titus Fonteius also succeeded in bringing safely the portion
of the corps of Publius that had been left in the camp; most even of
the Roman garrisons scattered in the south of Spain were enabled to
flee thither. In all Spain south of the Ebro the Phoenicians ruled
undisturbed; and the moment seemed not far distant, when the river
would be crossed, the Pyrenees would be open, and the communication
with Italy would be restored. But the emergency in the Roman camp
called the right man to the command. The choice of the soldiers,
passing over older and not incapable officers, summoned that Gaius
Marcius to become leader of the army; and his dexterous management
and quite as much perhaps, the envy and discord among the three
Carthaginian generals, wrested from these the further fruits of their
important victory. Such of the Carthaginians as had crossed the river
were driven back, and the line of the Ebro was held in the meanwhile,
till Rome gained time to send a new army and a new general.
Fortunately the turn of the war in Italy, where Capua had just fallen,
allowed this to be done. A strong legion--12,000 men--arriving under
the propraetor Gaius Claudius Nero, restored the balance of arms.
An expedition to Andalusia in the following year (544) was most
successful; Hasdrubal Barcas was beset and surrounded, and escaped a
capitulation only by ignoble stratagem and open perfidy. But Nero was
not the right general for the Spanish war. He was an able officer,
but a harsh, irritable, unpopular man, who had little skill in the
art of renewing old connections or of forming new ones, or in taking
advantage of the injustice and arrogance with which the Carthaginians
after the death of the Scipios had treated friend and foe in Further
Spain, and had exasperated all against them.

Publius Scipio

The senate, which formed a correct judgment as to the importance
and the peculiar character of the Spanish war, and had learned from
the Uticenses brought in as prisoners by the Roman fleet the great
exertions which were making in Carthage to send Hasdrubal and
M