The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty Six - Titus Livius
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32. Publius Cornelius the consul, about three days after Hannibal
moved from the bank of the Rhone, had come to the camp of the enemy,
with his army drawn up in square, intending to make no delay in
fighting: but when he saw the fortifications deserted, and that he
could not easily come up with them so far in advance before him, he
returned to the sea and his fleet, in order more easily and safely to
encounter Hannibal when descending from the Alps. But that Spain, the
province which he had obtained by lot, might not be destitute of Roman
auxiliaries, he sent his brother Cneius Scipio with the principal part
of his forces against Hasdrubal, not only to defend the old allies and
conciliate new, but also to drive Hasdrubal out of Spain. He himself,
with a very small force, returned to Genoa, intending to defend Italy
with the army which was around the Po. From the Druentia, by a road
that lay principally through plains, Hannibal arrived at the Alps
without molestation from the Gauls that inhabit those regions. Then,
though the scene had been previously anticipated from report, (by
which uncertainties are wont to be exaggerated,) yet the height of the
mountains when viewed so near, and the snows almost mingling with the
sky, the shapeless huts situated on the cliffs, the cattle and beasts
of burden withered by the cold, the men unshorn and wildly dressed,
all things, animate and inanimate, stiffened with frost, and other
objects more terrible to be seen than described, renewed their alarm.
To them, marching up the first acclivities, the mountaineers appeared
occupying the heights over head; who, if they had occupied the more
concealed valleys, might, by rushing out suddenly to the attack, have
occasioned great flight and havoc. Hannibal orders them to halt, and
having sent forward Gauls to view the ground, when he found there was
no passage that way, he pitches his camp in the widest valley he could
find, among places all rugged and precipitous. Then, having learned
from the same Gauls, when they had mixed in conversation with the
mountaineers, from whom they differed little in language and manners,
that the pass was only beset during the day, and that at night each
withdrew to his own dwelling, he advanced at the dawn to the heights,
as if designing openly and by day to force his way through the defile.
The day then being passed in feigning a different attempt from that
which was in preparation, when they had fortified the camp in the same
place where they had halted, as soon as he perceived that the
mountaineers had descended from the heights, and that the guards were
withdrawn, having lighted for show a greater number of fires than was
proportioned to the number that remained, and having left the baggage
in the camp, with the cavalry and the principal part of the infantry,
he himself with a party of light-armed, consisting of all the most
courageous of his troops, rapidly cleared the defile, and took post on
those very heights which the enemy had occupied.
33. At dawn of light the next day the camp broke up, and the rest of
the army began to move forward. The mountaineers, on a signal being
given, were now assembling from their forts to their usual station,
when they suddenly behold part of the enemy overhanging them from
above, in possession of their former position, and the others passing
along the road. Both these objects, presented at the same time to the
eye and the mind, made them stand motionless for a little while; but
when they afterwards saw the confusion in the pass, and that the
marching body was thrown into disorder by the tumult which itself
created, principally from the horses being terrified, thinking that
whatever terror they added would suffice for the destruction of the
enemy, they scramble along the dangerous rocks, as being accustomed
alike to pathless and circuitous ways. Then indeed the Carthaginians
were opposed at once by the enemy and by the difficulties of the
ground; and each striving to escape first from the danger, there was
more fighting among themselves than with their opponents. The horses
in particular created danger in the lines, which, being terrified by
the discordant clamours which the groves and re-echoing valleys
augmented, fell into confusion; and if by chance struck or wounded,
they were so dismayed that they occasioned a great loss both of men
and baggage of every description: and as the pass on both sides was
broken and precipitous, this tumult threw many down to an immense
depth, some even of the armed men; but the beasts of burden, with
their loads, were rolled down like the fall of some vast fabric.
Though these disasters were shocking to view, Hannibal however kept
his place for a little, and kept his men together, lest he might
augment the tumult and disorder; but afterwards, when he saw the line
broken, and that there was danger that he should bring over his army,
preserved to no purpose if deprived of their baggage, he hastened down
from the higher ground; and though he had routed the enemy by the
first onset alone, he at the same time increased the disorder in his
own army: but that tumult was composed in a moment, after the roads
were cleared by the flight of the mountaineers; and presently the
whole army was conducted through, not only without being disturbed,
but almost in silence. He then took a fortified place, which was the
capital of that district, and the little villages that lay around it,
and fed his army for three days with the corn and cattle he had taken;
and during these three days, as the soldiers were neither obstructed
by the mountaineers, who had been daunted by the first engagement, nor
yet much by the ground, he made considerable way.
34. He then came to another state, abounding, for a mountainous
country, with inhabitants; where he was nearly overcome, not by open
war, but by his own arts of treachery and ambuscade. Some old men,
governors of forts, came as deputies to the Carthaginian, professing,
"that having been warned by the useful example of the calamities of
others, they wished rather to experience the friendship than the
hostilities of the Carthaginians: they would, therefore, obediently
execute his commands, and begged that he would accept of a supply of
provisions, guides of his march, and hostages for the sincerity of
their promises." Hannibal, when he had answered them in a friendly
manner, thinking that they should neither be rashly trusted nor yet
rejected, lest if repulsed they might openly become enemies, having
received the hostages whom they proffered, and made use of the
provisions which they of their own accord brought down to the road,
follows their guides, by no means as among a people with whom he was
at peace, but with his line of march in close order. The elephants and
cavalry formed the van of the marching body; he himself, examining
every thing around, and intent on every circumstance, followed with
the choicest of the infantry. When they came into a narrower pass,
lying on one side beneath an overhanging eminence, the barbarians,
rising at once on all sides from their ambush, assail them in front
and rear, both at close quarters and from a distance, and roll down
huge stones on the army. The most numerous body of men pressed on the
rear; against whom the infantry, facing about and directing their
attack, made it very obvious, that had not the rear of the army been
well supported, a great loss must have been sustained in that pass.
Even as it was they came to the extremity of danger, and almost to
destruction: for while Hannibal hesitates to lead down his division
into the defile, because, though he himself was a protection to the
cavalry, lie had not in the same way left any aid to the infantry in
the rear; the mountaineers, charging obliquely, and on having broken
through the middle of the army, took possession of the road; and one
night was spent by Hannibal without his cavalry and baggage.
35. Next day, the barbarians running in to the attack between (the two
divisions) less vigorously, the forces were re-united, and the defile
passed, not without loss, but yet with a greater destruction of beasts
of burden than of men. From that time the mountaineers fell upon them
in smaller parties, more like an attack of robbers than war, sometimes
on the van, sometimes on the rear, according as the ground afforded
them advantage, or stragglers advancing or loitering gave them an
opportunity. Though the elephants were driven through steep and narrow
roads with great loss of time, yet wherever they went they rendered
the army safe from the enemy, because men unacquainted with such
animals were afraid of approaching too nearly. On the ninth day they
came to a summit of the Alps, chiefly through places trackless; and
after many mistakes of their way, which were caused either by the
treachery of the guides, or, when they were not trusted, by entering
valleys at random, on their own conjectures of the route. For two days
they remained encamped on the summit; and rest was given to the
soldiers, exhausted with toil and fighting: and several beasts of
burden, which had fallen down among the rocks, by following the track
of the army arrived at the camp. A fall of snow, it being now the
season of the setting of the constellation of the Pleiades, caused
great fear to the soldiers, already worn out with weariness of so many
hardships. On the standards being moved forward at daybreak, when the
army proceeded slowly over all places entirely blocked up with snow,
and languor and despair strongly appeared in the countenances of all,
Hannibal, having advanced before the standards, and ordered the
soldiers to halt on a certain eminence, whence there was a prospect
far and wide, points out to them Italy and the plains of the Po,
extending themselves beneath the Alpine mountains; and said "that they
were now surmounting not only the ramparts of Italy, but also of the
city of Rome; that the rest of the journey would be smooth and
down-hill; that after one, or, at most, a second battle, they would
have the citadel and capital of Italy in their power and possession."
The army then began to advance, the enemy now making no attempts
beyond petty thefts, as opportunity offered. But the journey proved
much more difficult than it had been in the ascent, as the declivity
of the Alps being generally shorter on the side of Italy is
consequently steeper; for nearly all the road was precipitous, narrow,
and slippery, so that neither those who made the least stumble could
prevent themselves from falling, nor, when fallen, remain in the same
place, but rolled, both men and beasts of burden, one upon another.
36. They then came to a rock much more narrow, and formed of such
perpendicular ledges, that a light-armed soldier, carefully making the
attempt, and clinging with his hands to the bushes and roots around,
could with difficulty lower himself down. The ground, even before very
steep by nature, had been broken by a recent falling away of the earth
into a precipice of nearly a thousand feet in depth. Here when the
cavalry had halted, as if at the end of their journey, it is announced
to Hannibal, wondering what obstructed the march that the rock was
impassable. Having then gone himself to view the place, it seemed
clear to him that he must lead his army round it, by however great a
circuit, through the pathless and untrodden regions around. But this
route also proved impracticable; for while the new snow of a moderate
depth remained on the old, which had not been removed, their footsteps
were planted with ease as they walked upon the new snow, which was
soft and not too deep; but when it was dissolved by the trampling of
so many men and beasts of burden, they then walked on the bare ice
below, and through the dirty fluid formed by the melting snow. Here
there was a wretched struggle, both on account of the slippery ice not
affording any hold to the step, and giving way beneath the foot more
readily by reason of the slope; and whether they assisted themselves
in rising by their hands or their knees, their supports themselves
giving way, they would stumble again; nor were there any stumps or
roots near; by pressing against which, one might with hand or foot
support himself; so that they only floundered on the smooth ice and
amid the melted snow. The beasts of burden sometimes also went into
this lower ice by merely treading upon it, at others they broke it
completely through, by the violence with which they struck in their
hoofs in their struggling, so that most of them, as if taken in a
trap, stuck in the hardened and deeply frozen ice.
37. At length, after the men and beasts of burden had been fatigued to
no purpose, the camp was pitched on the summit, the ground being
cleared for that purpose with great difficulty, so much snow was there
to be dug out and carried away. The soldiers being then set to make a
way down the cliff by which alone a passage could be effected, and it
being necessary that they should cut through the rocks, having felled
and lopped a number of large trees which grew around, they make a huge
pile of timber; and as soon as a strong wind fit for exciting the
flames arose, they set fire to it, and, pouring vinegar on the heated
stones, they render them soft and crumbling. They then open a way with
iron instruments through the rock thus heated by the fire, and soften
its declivities by gentle windings, so that not only the beasts of
burden, but also the elephants could be led down it. Four days were
spent about this rock, the beasts nearly perishing through hunger: for
the summits of the mountains are for the most part bare, and if there
is any pasture the snows bury it. The lower parts contain valleys, and
some sunny hills, and rivulets flowing beside woods, and scenes more
worthy of the abode of man. There the beasts of burden were sent out
to pasture, and rest given for three days to the men, fatigued with
forming the passage: they then descended into the plains, the country
and the dispositions of the inhabitants being now less rugged.
38. In this manner chiefly they came to Italy in the fifth month (as
some authors relate) after leaving New Carthage, having crossed the
Alps in fifteen days. What number of forces Hannibal had when he had
passed into Italy is by no means agreed upon by authors. Those who
state them at the highest, make mention of a hundred thousand foot and
twenty thousand horse; those who state them at the lowest, of twenty
thousand foot and six thousand horse. Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who
relates that he was made prisoner by Hannibal, would influence me most
as an authority, did he not confound the number by adding the Gauls
and Ligurians. Including these, (who, it is more probable, flocked to
him afterwards, and so some authors assert,) he says, that eighty
thousand foot and ten thousand horse were brought into Italy; and that
he had heard from Hannibal himself, that after crossing the Rhone he
had lost thirty-six thousand men, and an immense number of horses, and
other beasts of burden, among the Taurini, the next nation to the
Gauls, as he descended into Italy. As this circumstance is agreed on
by all, I am the more surprised that it should be doubtful by what
road he crossed the Alps; and that it should commonly be believed that
he passed over the Pennine mountain, and that thence [Footnote: from
Paenus, Carthaginian.] the name was given to that ridge of the Alps.
Coelius says, that he passed over the top of Mount Cremo; both which
passes would have brought him, not to the Taurini, but through the
Salasian mountaineers to the Libuan Gauls. Neither is it probable that
these roads into Gaul were then open, especially once those which,
lead to the Pennine mountain would have been unlocked up by nations
half German; nor by Hercules (if this argument has weight with any
one) do the Veragri, the inhabitants of this ridge, know of the name
being given to these mountains from the passage of the Carthaginians,
but from the divinity, whom the mountaineers style Penninus,
worshipped on the highest summit.
39. Very opportunely for the commencement of his operations, a war had
broken out with the Taurini, the nearest nation, against the
Insubrians; but Hannibal could not put his troops under arms to assist
either party, as they very chiefly felt the disorders they had before
contracted, in remedying them; for ease after toil, plenty after want,
and attention to their persons after dirt and filth, had variously
affected their squalid and almost savage-looking bodies. This was the
reason that Publius Cornelius, the consul, when he had arrived at Pisa
with his fleet, hastened to the Po, though the troops he received from
Manlius and Atilius were raw and disheartened by their late disgraces,
in order that he might engage the enemy when not yet recruited. But
when the consul came to Placentia, Hannibal had already moved from his
quarters, and had taken by storm one city of the Taurini, the capital
of the nation, because they did not come willingly into his alliance;
and he would have gained over to him, not only from fear, but also
from inclination, the Gauls who dwell beside the Po, had not the
arrival of the consul suddenly checked them while watching for an
opportunity of revolt. Hannibal at the same time moved from the
Taurini, thinking that the Gauls, uncertain which side to choose,
would follow him if present among them. The armies were now almost in
sight of each other, and their leaders, though not at present
sufficiently acquainted, yet met each other with a certain feeling of
mutual admiration. For the name of Hannibal, even before the
destruction of Saguntum, was very celebrated among the Romans; and
Hannibal believed Scipio to be a superior man, from the very
circumstance of his having been specially chosen to act as commander
against himself. They had increased too their estimation of each
other; Scipio, because, being left behind in Gaul, he had met Hannibal
when he had crossed into Italy; Hannibal, by his daring attempt of
crossing the Alps and by its accomplishment. Scipio, however, was the
first to cross the Po, and having pitched his camp at the river
Ticinus, he delivered the following oration for the sake of
encouraging his soldiers before he led them out to form for battle:
40. "If, soldiers, I were leading out that army to battle which I had
with me in Gaul, I should have thought it superfluous to address you;
for of what use would it be to exhort either those horsemen who so
gloriously vanquished the cavalry of the enemy at the river Rhone, or
those legions with whom, pursuing this very enemy flying before us, I
obtained in lieu of victory, a confession of superiority, shown by his
retreat and refusal to fight? Now because that army, levied for the
province of Spain, maintains the war under my auspices [Footnote:
Because Spain was his proper province as consul.] and the command of
my brother Cneius Scipio, in the country where the senate and people
of Rome wished him to serve, and since I, that you might have a consul
for your leader against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, have offered
myself voluntarily for this contest, few words are required to be
addressed from a new commander to soldiers unacquainted with him. That
you may not be ignorant of the nature of the war nor of the enemy, you
have to fight, soldiers, with those whom in the former war you
conquered both by land and sea; from whom you have exacted tribute for
twenty years; from whom you hold Sicily and Sardinia, taken as the
prizes of victory. In the present contest, therefore, you and they
will have those feelings which are wont to belong to the victors and
the vanquished. Nor are they now about to fight because they are
daring, but because it is unavoidable; except you can believe that
they who declined the engagement when their forces were entire, should
have now gained more confidence when two-thirds of their infantry and
cavalry have been lost in the passage of the Alps, and when almost
greater numbers have perished than survive. Yes, they are few indeed,
(some may say,) but they are vigorous in mind and body; men whose
strength and power scarce any force may withstand. On the contrary,
they are but the resemblances, nay, are rather the shadows of men;
being worn out with hunger, cold, dirt, and filth, and bruised and
enfeebled among stones and rocks. Besides all this, their joints are
frost-bitten, their sinews stiffened with the snow, their limbs
withered up by the frost, their armour battered and shivered, their
horses lame and powerless. With such cavalry, with such infantry, you
have to fight: you will not have enemies in reality, but rather their
last remains. And I fear nothing more than that when you have fought
Hannibal, the Alps may appear to have conquered him. But perhaps it
was fitting that the gods themselves should, without any human aid,
commence and carry forward a war with a leader and a people that
violate the faith of treaties; and that we, who next to the gods have
been injured, should finish the contest thus commenced and nearly
completed."
41. "I do not fear lest any one should think that I say this
ostentatiously for the sake of encouraging you, while in my own mind I
am differently affected. I was at liberty to go with my army into
Spain, my own province, whither I had already set out; where I should
have had a brother as the bearer of my councils and my dangers, and
Hasdrubal, instead of Hannibal, for my antagonist, and without
question a less laborious war: nevertheless, as I sailed along the
coast of Gaul, having landed on hearing of this enemy, and having sent
forward the cavalry, I moved my camp to the Rhone. In a battle of
cavalry, with which part of my forces the opportunity of engaging was
afforded, I routed the enemy; and because I could not overtake by land
his army of infantry, which was rapidly hurried away, as if in flight,
having returned to the ships with all the speed I could, after
compassing such an extent of sea and land, I have met him at the foot
of the Alps. Whether do I appear, while declining the contest, to have
fallen in unexpectedly with this dreaded foe, or encounter him in his
track? to challenge him and drag him out to decide the contest? I am
anxious to try whether the earth has suddenly, in these twenty years,
sent forth a new race of Carthaginians, or whether these are the same
who fought at the islands Aegates, and whom you permitted to defeat
from Eryx, valued at eighteen denarii a head; and whether this
Hannibal be, as he himself gives out, the rival of the expeditions of
Hercules, or one left by his father the tributary and taxed subject
and slave of the Roman people; who, did not his guilt at Saguntum
drive him to frenzy, would certainly reflect, if not upon his
conquered country, at least on his family, and his father, and the
treaties written by the hand of Hamilcar; who, at the command of our
consul, withdrew the garrison from Eryx; who, indignant and grieving,
submitted to the harsh conditions imposed on the conquered
Carthaginians; who agreed to depart from Sicily, and pay tribute to
the Roman people. I would, therefore, have you fight, soldiers, not
only with that spirit with which you are wont to encounter other
enemies, but with a certain indignation and resentment, as if you saw
your slaves suddenly taking up arms against you. We might have killed
them when shut up in Eryx by hunger, the most dreadful of human
tortures; we might have carried over our victorious fleet to Africa,
and in a few days have destroyed Carthage without any opposition. We
granted pardon to their prayers; we released them from the blockade;
we made peace with them when conquered; and we afterwards considered
them under our protection when they were oppressed by the African war.
In return for these benefits, they come under the conduct of a furious
youth to attack our country. And I wish that the contest on your side
was for glory, and not for safety: it is not about the possession of
Sicily and Sardinia, concerning which the dispute was formerly, but
for Italy, that you must fight: nor is there another army behind,
which, if we should not conquer, can resist the enemy; nor are there
other Alps, during the passage of which fresh forces may be procured:
here, soldiers, we must make our stand, as if we fought before the
walls of Rome. Let every one consider that he defends with his arms
not only his own person, but his wife and young children: nor let him
only entertain domestic cares and anxieties, but at the same time let
him revolve in his mind, that the senate and people of Rome now
anxiously regard our efforts; and that according as our strength and
valour shall be, such henceforward will be the fortune of that city
and of the Roman empire."
42. Thus the consul addressed the Romans. Hannibal, thinking that his
soldiers ought to be roused by deeds rather than by words, having
drawn his army around for the spectacle, placed in their midst the
captive mountaineers in fetters; and after Gallic arms had been thrown
at their feet, he ordered the interpreter to ask, "whether any among
them, on condition of being released from chains, and receiving, if
victorious, armour and a horse, was willing to combat with the sword?"
When they all, to a man, demanded the combat and the sword, and lots
were cast into the urn for that purpose, each wished himself the
person whom fortune might select for the contest. As the lot of each
man came out, eager and exulting with joy amidst the congratulations
of his comrades, and dancing after the national custom, he hastily
snatched up the arms: but when they fought, such was the state of
feeling, not only among their companions in the same circumstances,
but among the spectators in general, that the fortune of those who
conquered was not praised more than that of those who died bravely.