After Hasdrubal had led his troops into Italy, there still remained in Spain the two armies of Hasdrubal Gisgo and of Mago, which had been driven back to the Atlantic. Against these, Scipio carried on the war the rest of that year, and in the following one; but all the spirit of it had fled with the Barcine Hasdrubal. Mago tried only to keep Gades; Hasdrubal after a series of battles went over to Africa. In Gades, a city which wanted to be equal with Carthage, and yet was subject to her, treachery was brewing; they were engaged in a plan to give up Mago to the Romans. It was discovered and defeated: the magistrates were enticed out, and put to death. Mago, however, now received orders to withdraw from the place. He was to go to the Balearic isles, which seem to have revolted against Carthage; and from thence to Liguria, there to collect a force with which he was to support Hannibal in Italy, and also, at the same time, to raise troubles in Etruria. When the Spanish peoples saw that the Carthaginians had given them up, and that they were employing the last means in their power to squeeze out of them supplies for other wars, they refused to obey them any longer. To the inhabitants of Gades also, the severity which had been shown towards them, was only an additional motive for an everlasting separation; and they made an alliance with the Romans, to which some writers give an earlier date than we can possibly assume from the very connected account of Livy. This is a political falsification of history; the Gaditanians in fact pretended out of vanity to have concluded it immediately after Scipio’s arrival in the country. Scipio was still remaining in Spain in 545 and 546; the Carthaginians were quite driven out of it. Yet the Romans had no firm footing in that country; for they only offered to its people, who had reckoned upon having freedom, a rule which perhaps was still more oppressive than that of the Carthaginians, with whom they had an opportunity of getting pay, as these employed mercenaries, whilst the Romans only occasionally took small bodies of Celtiberian troops into their service. The Romans also now revenged themselves on some towns which had behaved with particular fury against them. There happened at this period some horrible events, the outbursts of a fanaticism of bravery which is turned into madness. Such was the defence of Illiturgis and of Astapa. From the latter of these, all who were able to bear arms sallied forth, and fought to the last man; and at the same time, those who remained behind killed the women and children, and set fire to the town, laying hands on themselves also while it was burning.