The years 535 to 546, or 547, are those of the wars of the Romans in Spain, which were waged with various success until the taking of New Carthage. The time from 548 to the end, may be called the African war of Scipio. The Sicilian war and the conquest of Sardinia, from 535 to 540, come in like episodes. In 540, the Macedonian war begins, which lasts until 547. Hannibal had taken upon himself the command after Hasdrubal’s death, and he forthwith displayed increased activity. The Romans, probably after the outbreak of the Cisalpine war, had made a treaty with Hasdrubal, not with the Carthaginian state, by which both parties with regard to Spain fixed upon the Ebro as the boundary between their respective possessions. Owing to the great gap which here occurs in our history, we cannot make out at what time the Romans settled in those parts; yet at the beginning of the second Punic war, they were masters of Tarraco and of the coast of Catalonia. Livy adds, that the Saguntines were to be left as a free state between both. Polybius, notwithstanding his general excellence, is sometimes mistaken in details. He had first edited his work down to the war of Perseus, a second edition went as far as the taking of Corinth; yet it may clearly be shown that he did not revise the first books in the second edition, and it is plain that he had not at that time the least knowledge of the geography of Spain: very likely he fancied, as Livy evidently did, that Saguntum lay east of the Ebro. Moreover, he knows nothing of the fact that Saguntum was to remain independent, and yet he had all the documents before him. Were it not so, there would then indeed have been a breach of faith on the side of Hannibal. Perhaps the Romans did not mean at any rate to abandon the people of Saguntum, with whom they were in alliance; and yet it may not have been expressedly stipulated, that an attack on Saguntum would be a violation of the peace. Now it is generally thought from the treaty between Rome and Carthage, that the Carthaginians had then under their rule the whole of Spain as far as the sources of the Ebro; but this is by no means the case. Under Hamilcar, they seem to have acquired the whole of Andalusia, and the greater part of Valencia; but beyond the Sierra Morena, they in all likelihood only first spread under Hasdrubal: their sway never extended further than New Castile and Estremadura; Lusitania, Old Castile, and Leon, never belonged to them. The farthest point to which Hannibal reached in the campaign against the Vaccæans, described by Polybius, was Salamanca, where, however, he did not found any lasting dominion: the tribes in the interior, and the Celtiberians, seem never to have acknowledged the supremacy of Carthage. The other peoples were under its protectorate: they retained their own form of government, and though not bound to serve, were ready to enlist under the banners of the Carthaginians, who gave good pay. Polybius himself