[19]
Taking the forces already there, and joining them in
one body with those he brought, he performed a lustration, and made the same kind of grandiloquent speech to them that he had made at Rome. The report spread immediately through all Spain, wearied of the Carthaginian rule and longing for the virtue of the Scipios, that Scipio the son of Scipio had been sent to them as a general, by divine providence. When he heard of this report he took care to give out that everything he did was by inspiration from heaven. He learned that the enemy were quartered in four camps at considerable distances from each other, containing altogether 25,000 foot and above 2500 horse, and that they kept their supplies of money, food, arms, missiles, and ships, besides prisoners and hostages from all Spain, at the city formerly called Saguntum (but then called Carthage),1 and that it was in charge of Mago with 10,000 Carthaginian soldiers. He decided to attack these first, on account of the smallness of the force and the great quantity of stores, and because he believed that this city, with its silver-mines and its rich and prosperous territory abounding in everything, and its very short passage to Africa, would constitute a secure base of operations by land and sea against the whole of Spain.
B.C. 210 |
