even to relieve them extensively.  The Roman burgesses began to perceive that dominion over a foreign people is an annoyance not only to the slave, but to the master, and murmured loudly regarding the odious war-service of Spain.  While the new generals with good reason refused to allow the relief of the existing corps as a whole, the men mutinied and threatened that, if they were not allowed their discharge, they would take it of their own accord.

The wars themselves, which the Romans waged in Spain, were but of a subordinate importance.  They began with the very departure of Scipio,(3) and continued as long as the war under Hannibal lasted.  After the peace with Carthage (in 553) there was a cessation of arms in the peninsula; but only for a short time.  In 557 a general insurrection broke out in both provinces; the commander of the Further province was hard pressed; the commander of Hither Spain was completely defeated, and was himself slain.  It was necessary to take up the war in earnest, and although in the meantime the able praetor Quintus Minucius had mastered the first danger, the senate resolved in 559 to send the consul Marcus Cato in person to Spain.  On landing at Emporiae he actually found the whole of Hither Spain overrun by the insurgents; with difficulty that seaport and one or two strongholds in the interior were still held for Rome.  A pitched battle took place between the insurgents and the consular army, in which, after an obstinate conflict man against man, the Roman military skill at length decided the day with its last reserve.  The whole of Hither Spain thereupon sent in its submission:  so little, however, was this submission meant in earnest, that on a rumour of the consul having returned to Rome the insurrection immediately recommenced.  But the rumour was false; and after Cato had rapidly reduced the communities which had revolted for the second time and sold them -en masse- into slavery, he decreed a general disarming of the Spaniards in the Hither province, and issued orders to all the towns of the natives from the Pyrenees to the Guadalquivir to pull down their walls on one and the same day.  No one knew how far the command extended, and there was no time to come to any understanding; most of the communities complied; and of the few that were refractory not many ventured, when the Roman army soon appeared before their walls, to await its assault.

These energetic measures were certainly not without permanent effect.  Nevertheless the Romans had almost every year to reduce to subjection some mountain valley or mountain stronghold in the “peaceful province,” and the constant incursions of the Lusitanians into the Further province led occasionally to severe defeats of the Romans.  In 563, for instance, a Roman army was obliged after heavy loss to abandon its camp, and to return by forced inarches into the more tranquil districts.  It was not till after a victory gained by the praetor Lucius