But the richest part of the prize was the 750 Spanish hostages--high in rank of course--whom the various tribes had given in pledge of their fidelity to Carthage. Now Scipio held these pledges, and they were a menace and a promise. They were Roman slaves, but he could by kindness, and by holding out the hope of emancipation, placate and further bind to him the native people. By an exercise of tact and clemency Scipio gained such an ascendancy over the inhabitants, and so moved were they by this unexpected generosity and kindness, that many would gladly have made him their king. But he seems to have been the "noblest Roman of them all," and when saluted as king on one occasion he said: "Never call me king. Other nations may revere that name, but no Roman can endure it. My soldiers have given me a more honorable title--that of general." Such nobility, such a display of Roman virtue, was a revelation to these barbarians; and they felt the grandeur of the words, though they could not quite understand them. They were won to the cause of Rome, and formed loyal alliances with Scipio which they never broke. In the year 206 B.C. Gades (Cadiz), the last stronghold, was surrendered to the Romans, and the entire Spanish Peninsula had been wrenched from the Carthaginians. _Iberia_ was changed to _Hispania_, and fifteen years later the whole of the Peninsula was organized into a Roman province, thenceforth known in history, not as _Iberia_, nor yet _Hispania_; but _Spain_, and its people as _Spaniards_. At the end of the third Punic war (149-146 B.C.), the ruin of the Carthaginians was complete. Hannibal had died a fugitive and a suicide. His nation had not a single ship upon the seas, nor a foot of territory upon the earth, and the great city of Carthage was plowed and sowed with salt. Rome had been used by Fate to fulfill her stern decree--"_Delenda est Carthago_." It was really only a limited portion of the Peninsula; a fringe of provinces upon the south and east coast, which had been under Carthaginian and now acknowledged Roman dominion. Beyond these the Keltiberian tribes in the center formed a sort of confederation, and consented to certain alliances with the Romans; while beyond them, intrenched in their own impregnable mountain fastnesses, were brave, warlike, independent tribes, which had never known anything but freedom, whose names even, Rome had not yet heard. The stern virtue and nobility of Scipio proved a delusive promise. Rome had not an easy task, and other and brutal methods were to be employed in subduing stubborn tribes and making of the whole a Latin nation. In one of the defiles of the Pyrenees there may now be seen the ruins of fortifications built by Cato the Elder, not long after Scipio, which show how early those free people in the north were made to feel the iron heel of the master and to learn their lesson of submission.