The Second Punic War begins

Hamilcar was assassinated in 228 b. c. Hannibal was only nineteen years old but had prepared to lead an army. Soon the new commander of the Carthaginian forces, his brother-in-law Hasdrubal (HAZ-droo-bahl), called on him to do just that. Hannibal crossed the Mediterranean to Spain, Hasdrubal's base of operations, but in 221 b. c., Hasdrubal was also assassinated.

Hasdrubal's killers were local tribesmen, possibly Celts. The real threat, as Hannibal well knew, came from Rome. Now in charge of the troops in Spain, Hannibal faced a conflict with Rome over the colony of Saguntum (suh-GUN-tum). The colony was well within Carthaginian territory. After the Romans laid claim to it, Hannibal attacked the city and destroyed the Roman resistance.

The Greek explorer Pytheas (PITH-ee-uhs; c. 380 b. c.-300 b. c.) lived long before the Punic Wars, at a time when Carthage was still firmly in control of the western Mediterranean. Therefore when he set out on a journey from the Greek colony of Massilia (muh-SIL-ee-uh), which is now the city of Marseilles (mahr-SAY) in southern France, he had to be careful to avoid trespassing on Phoenician territory.

His goal was Britain, source of tin for much of Europe. The Greek colonists wanted to find a route to the island, but no one knew exactly where it was. Pytheas set off on his journey some time about 310 B. C. Careful to avoid the western tip of Europe at Gibraltar (ji-BRAWL-tuhr), an important spot heavily guarded by the Carthaginians, he probably traveled overland across France.

Eventually he got to Britain and found the tin mines in what is now Cornwall on the southwestern tip of the island. He also explored much of Britain. He provided the first written observations of the Celtic tribes who inhabited it. But Pytheas kept on going, to a place in the far north he called Thule (TOO-lee).

The place he described was probably Norway, but the name Thule eventually came to be used for any place in the frozen north. (Today it is the name for a tiny settlement above the Arctic Circle in Greenland.) On his journeys, Pytheas heard of places even farther north, places where the sea was ice and where the sun never set in summertime. Later, when he returned to his sunny Mediterranean home and told about such things, people assumed he was making up tall tales and laughed at his stories.