According to HARVARDSHOES.COM, the possession of Sicily and Sardinia had been the stake of the first Punic war, that of Spain was the stake of the second: the victory gave the Romans successively both. The renewed interest of the Carthaginians for the Iberian Peninsula and the extension of their dominion over it after the war of the mercenaries moved Rome, which the acquisition of Sardinia and the friendly relations with the Phocians of Marseille inevitably led to affirm its influence in the Mediterranean. western, to halt the rival advance into the north of Spain. The first attempt to halt this advance with peaceful means, namely the treaty by which the opposing parties undertook to keep the course of the Ebro as the boundary of their respective expansion zone, was soon to prove ineffective, for theEmporiae. The first target to which the Roman generals, Cn. and P. Scipione, then P. Scipione, the future African, turned their weapons, it was to hit the Carthaginian power, but once Hannibal’s army escaped from Spain, and brought the war to Italy by this, this objective it could also have appeared of a secondary order, if beyond it the Romans had not aimed at replacing the Carthaginians in the dominion of the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, it can be said that Rome had obtained very little fruit in regards to the general outcome of the war, when in 206 Scipio left Spain to return to Italy: instead the possession of the peninsula, although at the time limited to a relatively small part of it, and even in this far from firmly established, it was now definitively assured:
During the war against the Carthaginians the relations between the Roman generals and the Iberian tribes, who supplied mercenaries indifferently to both sides in the struggle, were varied and fluctuating, depending, as is natural, on the more or less favorable course. of events; the first successes of Cn. Scipio at the mouth of the Ebro and the subsequent arrival of Publius facilitated their advance up to the saltus Castulonensis, that is, up to the limits of the Baetis region., but all influence on the indigenous peoples seemed lost after the painful defeat of the two brothers. The military victories and the shrewd policy of Fr. Scipione, which in the eyes of the Iberians must have appeared all the more generous the more narrow-minded, and inspired only by the needs of the moment, must have generally been that of the Carthaginian commanders, undoubtedly conciliated large sympathies with the Romans. After the capture of Nova Carthago (Cartagena) the chiefs of the tribes of the upper Ebro region, and among the first Indibile, king of the Ilergeti, who had been among the most loyal allies of the Carthaginians, made an act of submission to Scipio ; after the victory of Ilipa, the tribes of the fertile region of Baetisthey followed suit. But it was enough that Scipio left Spain for a short time to go to Africa to negotiate the alliance with Siface, for some of those tribes to break away from Rome; how later the infirmity of the Roman general determined the defection of Indibile; took up arms again, Scipio reduced the Ilergeti to obedience, while he sent C. Lelio and L. Marcio in the south to drive the Carthaginians from the last strip they still held in the peninsula, the city of Gades (Cadiz), whose residents they already leaned on the side of Rome. The escape of Magone determined the surrender of the city, which was ensured autonomy and freedom.
Having thus removed the Carthaginians completely out of the way, Scipio left Spain to return to Italy, not without having first founded in the south of it, in the Baetis valley, the colony to which he gave the auspicious name of Italica, and in which he established some of the his veterans, and particularly those whom the war had rendered incapable of new armed trials.
The regions that the Romans now owned in the Iberian Peninsula were made up of two groups, one at noon, between the Baetis and the Anas, another to the north, straddling the course of the Ebro, barely joined by a narrow coastal strip, in which it was Nova Carthago. Such incorporation of ownership explains why the senate, in 197 when he thought proper to give a stable sort to his government, made it two separate provinces, called, from their position with respect to Rome, Hispania Citerior and H. further. In the period from Scipio’s departure to 197 that government was instead provisional, and was entrusted to generals who, like Scipio had already, had not yet held any public office. The first sent to succeed him were L. Cornelio Lentulo and L. Manlio Acidino: the departure of Scipio had given rise to a new insurrection of Indibile, which the Roman troops managed this time to definitively cut it out of the way; other military actions, perhaps however of more limited importance, followed in the following years: on the other hand it is certain that neither the area owned was entirely quiet, nor could the Roman dominion be considered closed in it, of which that area was instead destined only to be the first nucleus, to be gradually extended to the whole peninsula.
