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breastplates, helmets, greaves, cutting swords for close work and long spears for the first encounter. After a series of defeats had been inflicted on the Carthaginians during a Roman landing in North Africa in the First Punic War, their army had been completely reorganised by Xanthippus, a Spartan commander. He had introduced the disciplined order of the phalanx, which had triumphed over nearly all of the East in the campaigns of Alexander the Great. In the phalanx the men stood shoulder to shoulder, each man’s right side being covered by his neighbour’s shield, presenting a bristling wall of long spears to the enemy. While admirable for use in open country and against an ill-disciplined enemy, the phalanx had the disadvantage of being somewhat unwieldy. Hannibal was soon to learn from the Romans the use of more mobile tactical units, just as he was to adopt the use of Roman arms, especially the legionary’s sword in place of the cutting swords of his Iberians and Gauls. The great Carthaginian weapon which was new to Europe, though long familiar in the East, was the elephant—so long a part of Hannibal’s legend that it must be separately described in the account of his great invasion.
    ‘From the day on which he was proclaimed commander-in-chief,’ wrote Polybius, ‘as though Italy had been assigned to him for his field of operations and he had been instructed to make war on Rome, Hannibal felt that no postponement was permissible, lest he too, like his father Hamilcar, and afterwards Hasdrubal, should be overtaken, while delaying, by some accident, and resolved upon attacking the people of Saguntum.’ His hand was probably forced by evidence that the Romans were betraying a new interest in Spain; new in that recently their attention had been concentrated on northern Italy where the Cisalpine Gauls, who had settled on the Italian side of the Alps, had swept down south and even laid waste to Etruria. This brave but undisciplined enemy had gone on to defeat a Roman army—news of which must have encouraged Hannibal—and had threatened the city itself. Until Rome had mastered them and had established colonies in their area (laying the foundations of a new province, Cisalpine Gaul) they were too distracted to pay close attention to events in Spain. But in the first two years of Hannibal’s command reports from Massilia, and no doubt from Saguntum, had renewed their concern about the Carthaginian threat from the west.
    They had taken due note that Saguntum, lying about halfway between the Ebro and the new Carthaginian port and capital of Nova Cartago, might serve as a possible bridgehead in the event of any operations against the Carthaginians. Its close ties with Massilia and the fact that the Romans had control of the sea in the western Mediterranean meant that they could maintain good communications with Saguntum. It was probably not long after their agreement with Hasdrubal the Handsome over relative spheres of influence that they entered into a diplomatic relationship with Saguntum, based on their alliance with Massilia. Their foot was now in the door, and about two years later they took advantage of a political dispute in Saguntum to set themselves up as arbitrators of the affair. The fact that they were interfering in political issues well south of the Ebro line does not seem to have troubled them. Their action followed the same pattern as their previous interference in Sicily, which had precipitated the First Punic War. This ‘benevolent interference’ was a technique that the Romans would often employ in the centuries to come: it is one which expansionist powers have always used to provoke a conflict or to extend their territory. The inevitable result of Roman intervention in the politics of Saguntum was that a party favourable to them seized power in the city.
    Hannibal, after dispersing his troops at the end of the year 220, had spent the winter in Nova Cartago. There was much to attend to, for he could