Punic Wars

After this there was peace between the Romans and the Carthaginians, but the Africans, who were subject to the latter and had served them as auxiliaries in the Sicilian war, and certain Celtic mercenaries who complained that their pay had been withheld and that the promises made to them had not been kept, made war against the Carthaginians in a very formidable manner. The latter appealed to the Romans for aid on the score of friendship, and the Romans allowed them for this war only to hire mercenaries in Italy, for even that had been forbidden in the treaty. Nevertheless they sent men to act as mediators between them. The Africans refused the mediation, but offered to become subjects of the Romans if they would take them. [*](Y.R. 514) The latter would not accept them. Then the Carthaginians [*](B.C.240) blockaded the towns with a great fleet, and cut off their supplies from the sea, and as the land was untilled in consequence of the war they overcame the Africans by the famine, but were driven to supply their own wants by piracy, even taking some Roman ships, killing the crews, and throwing them overboard to conceal the crime. This [*](Y.R. 516) escaped notice for a long time. When the facts became [*](B.C.238) known and the Carthaginians were called to account they put off the day of reckoning until the Romans voted to make war against them, when they surrendered Sardinia by way of compensation. And this clause was added to the former treaty of peace.

Not long afterwards the Carthaginians invaded Spain [*](B.C.229) and were gradually subduing it, when the Saguntines appealed to Rome and a boundary was fixed to the Carthaginian advance by agreement that they should not cross the river Ebro. The Carthaginians, under the lead of Hannibal, violated this treaty by crossing the stream, and having done so Hannibal marched against Italy, leaving the command in Spain in the hands of others. The Roman generals in Spain, Publius Cornelius Scipio and Gnæus Cornelius Scipio, two brothers, after having performed some brilliant exploits were both slain by the enemy. The generals who succeeded them fared badly until Scipio, the son of the Publius Scipio who was killed in Spain, set sail [*](Y.R. 544) thither, and making all believe that he was come by a [*](B.C.210) divine mission and had divine counsel in all things, prevailed brilliantly, and achieving great glory by this success, gave over his command to those sent to succeed him, returned to Rome, and asked to be sent with an army to Africa so as to draw Hannibal out of Italy and to bring retribution upon the Carthaginians in their own country.