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While these things are transacting in Italy, Cneius Cornelius Scipio having been sent into Spain with a fleet and army, when, setting out from the mouth of the Rhone, and sailing past the Pyrenaean mountains, he had moored his fleet at Emporiae, having there landed his army, and beginning with the Lacetani, he brought the whole coast, as far as the river Iberus, under the Roman dominion, partly by renewing the old, and partly by forming new alliances.

Mandonius and Indibilis, who were not at all satisfied with what had occurred, for they had anticipated with certainty that they would have the dominion of Spain on the expulsion of the Carthaginians, called together their countrymen the Lacetani, and summoning the Celtiberian youth to arms, devastated in a hostile manner the territories of the Suessetanians and Sedetanians, allies of the Romans.

Cato, however, at once marched to meet Scipio with an escort of five companies of infantry and five hundred horsemen. On his way he conquered the tribe of the Lacetani; and finding among them six hundred deserters from the Roman army, he put them to death.

He then proceeded against the Ausetani near the Iberus, who were also the allies of the Carthaginians; and having laid siege to their city, he cut off by an ambuscade the Lacetani, while bringing assistance by night to their neighbours, having attacked them at a small distance from the city, as they were designing to enter it.