Spain

ange the products of their skill, and in course of time a great trade was carried on between distant Ph?nicia on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and Iberian "Tarsh

he Ph?nicians founded the city to-day known as Cadiz, and which they called "Gaddir," or fortress, subsequently named Gadez by the Romans. Although the Ph?nician sailors had long traded here-for the founding of cities

nts, one on the European and the other on the African coast, which even to-day are known as the "Pillars of Hercules." There are other traditions referring to Hercules and his connection with Spain, for it is thought that in this country he sought the oxen of the triplebodied Geryones, as he was on his way back from Gadira (or Gaddir), when he killed the monster Cacus. And further, there is not much doubt that the f

ut hammered it into anchors and ballast for their ships. Gold, silver, and copper coins were minted and ornaments wrought; and these, together with other objects of antiquity, are frequently found to-day-relics of the ancient Gaddir, or of Ph?nician "Cadiz under the Sea." Some have held that, while the first city was founded here, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, yet the mines of gold, si

ar of conquest. At the most, they colonized a few seacoast cities, and in exchange for the natural products of Spain they b

h century b.c., yet they still existed in obscurity when the great Hamilcar Barca turned his attention to Spain as a possible recruiting ground for his depleted armies. Rome had conquered him in Sardinia and Sicily, which provinces he had lost to Carthage, and he

Cartagena, in Spain, after Hamilcar was killed, in the year 228 b.c., car

o hate the arch-enemy of Carthage. When, as a boy, he had pleaded with Hamilcar to be taken with him to Spain, his father had consented only after he had sworn, on the altar of Jupiter the Great, eternal enmity to Ro

ders and the persistence of its foes, lasting nearly a year, and ending in its total destruction; for, finding themselves hemmed in by Hannibal's army of one hundred and fifty thousand men, and their fortifications crumbling beneath the terrible battering-rams, the Saguntine soldiers made a

t in its place, and on its site, Murviedro-meaning the ol

and ninety thousand foot soldiers, for the conquest of Rome. He had been drilling his soldiers and husbanding his resources for years, in anticipation of this momentous event; but even then it would seem that he was poorly prepared to meet a nation that could put in the field an army of trained soldiers three times as great as his. But, after the wonderf