y a wound the
consul received, which disabled him from continuing the combat. However,
this general was rescued out of the enemy's hands by the bravery of his
son, then but seventeen years old; and who afterwards was honoured with
the surname of Africanus, for having put a glorious period to this war.

The consul, though dangerously wounded, retreated in good order, and was
conveyed to his camp by a body of horse, who covered him with their arms
and bodies: the rest of the army followed him thither. He hastened to the
Po, which he crossed with his army, and then broke down the bridge,
whereby he prevented Hannibal from overtaking him.

It is agreed, that Hannibal owed this first victory to his cavalry; and it
was judged from thenceforth that the main strength of his army consisted
in his horse; and therefore, that it would be proper for the Romans to
avoid large open plains, such as are those between the Po and the Alps.

Immediately after the battle of the Ticinus, all the neighbouring Gauls
seemed to contend who should submit themselves first to Hannibal, furnish
him with ammunition, and enlist in his army. And this, as Polybius has
observed, was what chiefly induced that wise and skilful general,
notwithstanding the small number and weakness of his troops, to hazard a
battle; which he indeed was now obliged to venture, from the impossibility
of marching back whenever he should desire to do it; because nothing but a
battle would oblige the Gauls to declare for him, whose assistance was the
only refuge he then had left.

_Battle of the Trebia._--Sempronius the consul, upon the orders he had
received from the senate, was returned from Sicily to Ariminum.(752) From
thence he marched towards the Trebia, a small river of Lombardy, which
falls into the Po a little above Placentia, where he joined his forces to
those of Scipio. Hannibal advanced towards the camp of the Romans, from
which he was separated only by that small river. The armies lying so near
one another, gave occasion to frequent skirmishes, in one of which
Sempronius, at the head of a body of horse, gained some advantage over a
party of Carthaginians, very trifling indeed, but which nevertheless very
much increased the good opinion this general naturally entertained of his
own merit.

This inconsiderable success seemed to him a complete victory. He boasted
his having vanquished the enemy in the same kind of fight in which his
colleague had been defeated, an