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Updated: June 8, 2025
They were also bound by the treaty not to molest the people of Saguntum, a city lying between the Iberus and the Carthaginian dominions. Saguntum was in alliance with the Romans and under their protection. Hamilcar was, however, very restless and uneasy at being obliged thus to refrain from hostilities with the Roman power.
That then, indignant that the Romans demanded those, whosoever had besieged Saguntum, to be delivered up to them, as on account of a crime, they had passed the Iberus to blot out the name of the Romans, and to emancipate the world. That then the way seemed long to no one, though they were pursuing it from the setting to the rising of the sun.
The time for him to consider whether he would encounter the hostility of the Roman empire, aroused to the highest possible degree, was when his army was drawn up upon the banks of the Iberus, before they crossed it. The Iberus was his Rubicon. That line once overstepped, there was to be no further faltering.
As there could be no doubt that by attacking them the Romans would be excited to arms, he first led his army into the territory of the Olcades, a people beyond the Iberus, rather within the boundaries than under the dominion of the Carthaginians, so that he might not seem to have had the Saguntines for his object, but to have been drawn on to the war by the course of events; after the adjoining nations had been subdued, and by the progressive annexation of conquered territory.
After this harangue he dismissed them, with orders to get themselves in readiness in every respect for marching the next day; when, setting out, he arrived at the river Iberus in ten days. Then crossing the river, he, on the fourth day, pitched his camp within sight of the enemy. Before him was a plain enclosed on all sides by mountains.
Having animated his troops with this harangue, and leaving Marcus Silanus with three thousand infantry and three hundred horse, for the protection of that district, he crossed the Iberus with all the rest of his troops, consisting of twenty-five thousand infantry and two thousand five hundred horse.
But when intelligence was brought them that Hasdrubal, son of Gisgo, who was coming to put the finishing stroke to the war, had crossed the Iberus and was drawing near, and when they saw the signal for battle displayed by a new commander, then calling to mind whom they had had for their leaders a little while ago, relying on what leaders and what forces they used to go out to fight, they all suddenly burst into tears and beat their heads, some raising their hands to heaven and arraigning the gods, others prostrating themselves upon the ground and invoking by name each his own former commander.
From Gades he returned to the winter quarters of the army at Carthage; and thence setting out, he led his forces by the city Etovissa to the Iberus and the sea-coast.
In the mean time no further intelligence had been brought into Italy to Rome by the ambassadors of Marseilles than that Hannibal had passed the Iberus; when the Boii asked if he had already passed the Alps, revolted after instigating the Insubrians; not so much through their ancient resentment towards the Roman people, as on account of their having felt aggrieved that the colonies of Placentia and Cremona had been lately planted in the Gallic territory about the Po.
Hannibal could not, therefore, cross the Iberus or attack Saguntum without an open infraction of the treaty. He, however, immediately began to move toward Saguntum and to attack the nations in the immediate vicinity of it.
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