*Hasdrubal.* Consequently, when Hamilcar died in battle in 229 B. C. he was succeeded in the command by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who carried on his predecessor’s policy. He it was who founded the town of New Carthage (Carthagena) to serve as the center of Carthaginian influence in Spain. The annual revenue of from 2000 to 3000 talents ($2,400,000 to $3,000,000) derived from the Spanish silver mines readily induced the Carthaginians to acquiesce in the almost regal position that the Barcidae enjoyed in Spain. Thus the latter could carry out their plans without interference from the home government. *Hasdrubal’s treaty with Rome, 226 B. C.* But the Carthaginian advance in Spain aroused the alarm of the Greeks of Massalia, and of her colonies, Emporiae and Rhodae, whose commercial interests and independence were thereby endangered. Now the Massaliots had long been in alliance with Rome,—they were said to have contributed to the ransom which the Romans paid to the Gauls in 387 B. C.,—and there seems little doubt that they secured the intervention of Rome on their behalf. In 226 B. C. the Romans concluded a treaty with Hasdrubal which bound him not to send an armed force north of the river Ebro. A few years later the Romans entered into a defensive alliance with the Spanish town of Saguntum, which lay to the south of the Ebro, but which was not subject to Carthage. The motive of the Romans in making this alliance is obscure, but it was probably in answer to a request from the Saguntines. *Hannibal.* Upon the assassination of Hasdrubal in 221, Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, then in his twenty-sixth year, was appointed to the command in Spain. Thereupon, relying upon the army which his predecessors and he himself had built up in Spain and upon the resources of the Carthaginian dominions there, he resolved to take a step which would inevitably lead to war with Rome, namely, to attack Saguntum. *The siege of Saguntum: 219 B. C.* Using as a pretext a dispute between the Saguntines and some of his Spanish allies, he laid siege to the town in 219 B. C. and captured it after a siege of eight months. A Roman embassy appeared at Carthage to demand the surrender of Hannibal and his staff as the price of averting war with Rome. But the anti-Roman party was in the majority and the Carthaginian senate accepted the responsibility for the act of their general, whatever its consequences might be. The Roman ambassador replied with the declaration of war.