Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
The not
inconsiderable commercial connections of Spain, her important iron-
mines, and her still more important silver-mines famous from ancient
times even in the far east(5)--which Rome, like Carthage, took into
her own hands, and the management of which was specially regulated by
Marcus Cato (559)--must beyond doubt have co-operated to induce its
retention; but the chief reason of the Romans for retaining the
peninsula in their own immediate possession was, that there were no
states in that quarter of similar character to the Massiliot republic
in the land of the Celts and the Numidian kingdom in Libya, and that
thus they could not abandon Spain without putting it into the power
of any adventurer to revive the Spanish empire of the Barcides.
5. Cf. 1 Maccab. viii. 3. "And Judas heard what the Romans had done
to the land of Hispania to become masters of the silver and gold
mines there."
