of
the existing corps as a whole, the men mutinied and threatened that,
if they were not allowed their discharge, they would take it of
their own accord.

The wars themselves, which the Romans waged in Spain, were but of
a subordinate importance. They began with the very departure of
Scipio,(3) and continued as long as the war under Hannibal lasted.
After the peace with Carthage (in 553) there was a cessation of
arms in the peninsula; but only for a short time. In 557 a general
insurrection broke out in both provinces; the commander of the
Further province was hard pressed; the commander of Hither Spain was
completely defeated, and was himself slain. It was necessary to take
up the war in earnest, and although in the meantime the able praetor
Quintus Minucius had mastered the first danger, the senate resolved in
559 to send the consul Marcus Cato in person to Spain. On landing at
Emporiae he actually found the whole of Hither Spain overrun by the
insurgents; with difficulty that seaport and one or two strongholds
in the interior were still held for Rome. A pitched battle took place
between the insurgents and the consular army, in which, after an
obstinate conflict man against man, the Roman military skill at length
decided the day with its last reserve. The whole of Hither Spain
thereupon sent in its submission: so little, however, was this
submission meant in earnest, that on a rumour of the consul having
returned to Rome the insurrection immediately recommenced. But the
rumour was false; and after Cato had rapidly reduced the communities
which had revolted for the second time and sold them -en masse- into
slavery, he decreed a general disarming of the Spaniards in the Hither
province, and issued orders to all the towns of the natives from the
Pyrenees to the Guadalquivir to pull down their walls on one and the
same day. No one knew how far the command extended, and there was no
time to come to any understanding; most of the communities complied;
and of the few that were refractory not many ventured, when the Roman
army soon appeared before their walls, to await its assault.

These energetic measures were certainly not without permanent effect.
Nevertheless the Romans had almost every year to reduce to subjection
some mountain valley or mountain stronghold in the "peaceful
province," and the constant incursions of the Lusitanians into the
Further province led occasionally to severe defeats of the Romans.
In