arrear for many years, favoured the rising.  But Scipio recovered sooner than was expected, and dexterously suppressed the tumult among the soldiers; upon which the communities that had taken the lead in the national rising were subdued at once before the insurrection gained ground.  Seeing that nothing came of this movement and Gades could not be permanently held, the Carthaginian government ordered Mago to gather together whatever could be got in ships, troops, and money, and with these, if possible, to give another turn to the war in Italy.  Scipio could not prevent this—­his dismantling of the fleet now avenged itself—­and he was a second time obliged to leave in the hands of his gods the defence, with which he had been entrusted, of his country against new invasions.  The last of Hamilcar’s sons left the peninsula without opposition.  After his departure Gades, the oldest and last possession of the Phoenicians on Spanish soil, submitted on favourable conditions to the new masters.  Spain was, after a thirteen years’ struggle, converted from a Carthaginian into a Roman province, in which the conflict with the Romans was still continued for centuries by means of insurrections always suppressed and yet never subdued, but in which at the moment no enemy stood opposed to Rome.  Scipio embraced the first moment of apparent peace to resign his command (in the end of 548), and to report at Rome in person the victories which he had achieved and the provinces which he had won.

Italian War
Position of the Armies

While the war was thus terminated in Sicily by Marcellus, in Greece by Publius Sulpicius, and in Spain by Scipio, the mighty struggle went on without interruption in the Italian peninsula.  There after the battle of Cannae had been fought and its effects in loss or gain could by degrees be discerned, at the commencement of 540, the fifth year of the war, the dispositions of the opposing Romans and Phoenicians were the following.  North Italy had been reoccupied by the Romans after the departure of Hannibal, and was protected by three legions, two of which were stationed in the Celtic territory, the third as a reserve in Picenum.  Lower Italy, as far as Mount Garganus and the Volturnus, was, with the exception of the fortresses and most of the ports, in the hands of Hannibal.  He lay with his main army at Arpi, while Tiberius Gracchus with four legions confronted him in Apulia, resting upon the fortresses of Luceria and Beneventum.  In the land of the Bruttians, where the inhabitants had thrown themselves entirely into the arms of Hannibal, and where even the ports—­excepting Rhegium, which the Romans protected from Messana—­had been occupied by the Phoenicians, there was a second Carthaginian army under Hanno, which in the meanwhile saw no enemy to face it.  The Roman main army of four legions under the two consuls, Quintus Fabius and Marcus Marcellus, was on the point of attempting to recover Capua.  To these there fell to be