. He commanded the cavalry to charge as soon as
they should see them advanced into the water. He drew up the line of
his infantry on the bank with forty elephants in front. The Carpetani,
with the addition of the Olcades and Vaccaei amounted to a hundred
thousand, an invincible army, were the fight to take place in the open
plain. Being therefore both naturally ferocious and confiding in their
numbers; and since they believed that the enemy had retired through
fear thinking that victory was only delayed by the intervention of the
river, they raise a shout, and in every direction, without the command
of any one, dash into the stream, each where it nearest to him. At the
same time, a heavy force of cavalry poured into the river from its
opposite bank, and the engagement commenced in the middle of the
channel on very unequal terms; for there the foot-soldier, having no
secure footing, and scarcely trusting to the ford, could be borne down
even by an unarmed horseman, by the mere shock of his horse urged at
random; while the horseman, with the command of his body and his
weapons, his horse moving steadily even through the middle of the
eddies, could maintain the fight either at close quarters or at a
distance. A great number were swallowed up by the current; some being
carried by the whirlpools of the stream to the side of the enemy, were
trodden down by the elephants; and whilst the last, for whom it was
more safe to retreat to their own bank, were collecting together after
their various alarms, Hannibal, before they could regain courage after
such excessive consternation, having entered the river with his army
in a close square, forced them to fly from the bank. Having then laid
waste their territory, he received the submission of the Carpetani
also within a few days. And now all the country beyond the Iberus,
excepting that of the Saguntines, was under the power of the
Carthaginians.

6. As yet there was no war with the Saguntines, but already, in order
to a war, the seeds of dissension were sown between them and their
neighbours, particularly the Turetani, with whom when the same person
sided who had originated the quarrel, and it was evident, not that a
trial of the question of right, but violence, was his object,
ambassadors were sent by the Saguntines to Rome to implore assistance
in the war which now evidently threatened them. The consuls then at
Rome were Publius Cornelius Scipio and Tiberius Sempronius Longus,
wh