Sending ahead ambassadors to explain that his intentions were peaceful, he arranged to meet the local chieftains at Ruscino (Castel-Roussillon). Here he succeeded in convincing them that his war was with Rome, and that his army was marching against the enemies of their race and to aid their cousins in northern Italy. After some discussion they accepted his word—and his bribes—and allowed him to pass freely through their territory. Difficult terrain lay ahead: the vast, marshy expanse of the Rhône delta, scarcely tamed two thousand years later, and astonishingly primitive then. It was strange indeed to these Spanish and North African troops, accustomed to mountains, to long savannahs, or to the expanses of the desert, but not to a wild water-world. The two consuls in Italy had been freed by midsummer from their attention to the uprising in the north and had returned to their original enterprises—Tiberius Sempronius making lavish preparations in Sicily for the invasion of North Africa and Publius Cornelius Scipio preparing to embark troops for the coastal voyage to Massilia.
