The conquests of Scipio Africanus had driven the Carthaginians out of Spain, and established the Roman supremacy in that country. Accordingly, soon after the end of the Second Punic War (about B.C. 198), the Romans proceeded to consolidate their dominion in Spain by dividing it into two provinces, each governed by a Praetor, which were called Hispania Citerior, or Hither Spain, and Hispania Ulterior, or Farther Spain, and divided from each other by the Iberus or the Ebro. But it was little more than the eastern part of the peninsula that was really subject to Rome. The powerful tribes of the Celtiberians in Central Spain, the Lusitanians in Portugal, and the Cantabrians and Gallaecians in the northwest, still maintained their independence. The division of the country into two provinces showed that the Romans intended to occupy it permanently, and occasioned a general insurrection. The Consul M. Porcius Cato, of whom we shall speak more fully presently, was sent to put down this insurrection (B.C. 195). The whole country was in arms; but his military genius and indefatigable industry soon re-established the superiority of Rome. He gained several decisive victories, contrived to set tribe against tribe, and took native mercenaries into his pay. The details of his campaign are full of horrors. We read of the wholesale slaughter of men who had laid down their arms, of multitudes sold as slaves, and of many more who had put themselves to death to escape this fate. Cato was not the man to feel any compunctions of conscience in the performance of what he considered a rigorous public task. He boasted of having destroyed more towns in Spain than he had spent days in that country. When he had reduced the whole of Hither Spain to a hollow, sullen, and temporary submission, he returned to Rome, and was rewarded with a triumph. The severe measures of Cato only exasperated the Spaniards. They again took up arms, and continued to resist the Roman Praetors for the next sixteen years, till Tib. Sempronius Gracchus, the father of the celebrated tribunes, after gaining several brilliant victories over the Celtiberians, granted them an honorable peace. By his wise measures and conciliatory conduct he won the affections of the natives, and induced them to submit to the Roman supremacy (B.C. 179). It remains to mention two other wars in the West. The Sardinians and Corsicans revolted, and held out for two years against the Conqueror of Spain (B.C. 177-175). But Gracchus effected their complete subjugation, and brought to Rome so large a number of captives for sale as to give rise to the proverb "Sardi venales" for any thing that was cheap and worthless.