After that, from Tarraco you marched through places garrisoned by Roman troops.

On the banks of the Iberus were the armies of your father and your uncle, rendered still more furious after the loss of their generals, even by the very calamity they had suffered.

The general, indeed, Lucius Marcius, had been irregularly constituted and chosen for the time by the suffrages of the soldiers; but had he been adorned with noble birth and the regular gradation of preferment, he would have been equal to the most distinguished generals, from his skill in every art of war.

You then laid siege to Carthage, quite at your leisure, not one of the three Punic armies coming to the defence of their allies.

The rest of your achievements, nor do I wish to disparage them, are by no means to be compared with what you will have to do in a war in Africa, where there is not a single harbour open to receive our fleet, no part of the country at peace with us, no state in alliance, no king in friendship with us, no room in any part either to take up a position or to advance.