Roman involvement in Spain: the original motives

To the Roman senate immediately before the outbreak of the war with Hannibal in 218, Spain was an area of Carthaginian activity, and thus of Roman interest when war was declared. Hispania had already been decided upon by the senators as one of the two regions in which the war was to be fought; according to Livy, their first action on hearing of the sack of Saguntum was to assign that provincia to the consul P. Cornelius Scipio. The context of this assignment and the normal usage of the period make the senate's intention clear. Spain, along with Africawith-Sicily, the other provincia named at this time, were to be the places within which the consuls were meant to exercise their imperium. The naming of these provinciae was an essential step in the prosecution of the war, not a territorial claim.

It is not difficult to see why Spain seemed important to the senate. First, and most importantly, it was where Hannibal and his army were, and therefore where it was expected that the war would actually take place, when the embassy bearing the final ultimatum left for Carthage once the consular commands had been assigned. In the event, the delay to Scipio's recruitment plans (caused by the need to divert at least a part of his troops to deal with the attack by Gauls in the north of Italy on the newly planted Latin colonies of Placentia and Cremona), and still more the speed of Hannibal's advance across the Pyrenees and through southern France thwarted the senate's expectation.