the Apennines was
accomplished without much difficulty, at a point as far west as
possible or, in other words, as distant as possible from the enemy;
but the marshy low grounds between the Serchio and the Arno were so
flooded by the melting of the snow and the spring rains, that the army
had to march four days in water, without finding any other dry spot
for resting by night than was supplied by piling the baggage or by
the sumpter animals that had fallen. The troops underwent unutterable
sufferings, particularly the Gallic infantry, which marched behind the
Carthaginians along tracks already rendered impassable: they murmured
loudly and would undoubtedly have dispersed to a man, had not the
Carthaginian cavalry under Mago, which brought up the rear, rendered
flight impossible. The horses, assailed by a distemper in their
hoofs, fell in heaps; various diseases decimated the soldiers;
Hannibal himself lost an eye in consequence of ophthalmia.

Flaminius

But the object was attained. Hannibal encamped at Fiesole, while
Gaius Flaminius was still waiting at Arezzo until the roads should
become passable that he might blockade them. After the Roman
defensive position had thus been turned, the best course for the
consul, who might perhaps have been strong enough to defend the
mountain passes but certainly was unable now to face Hannibal in the
open field, would have been to wait till the second army, which had
now become completely superfluous at Ariminum, should arrive. He
himself, however, judged otherwise. He was a political party leader,
raised to distinction by his efforts to limit the power of the senate;
indignant at the government in consequence of the aristocratic
intrigues concocted against him during his consulship; carried away,
through a doubtless justifiable opposition to their beaten track of
partisanship, into a scornful defiance of tradition and custom;
intoxicated at once by blind love of the common people and equally
bitter hatred of the party of the nobles; and, in addition to all
this, possessed with the fixed idea that he was a military genius.
His campaign against the Insubres of 531, which to unprejudiced
judges only showed that good! soldiers often repair the errors
of bad generals,(2) was regarded by him and by his adherents as an
irrefragable proof that the Romans had only to put Gaius Flaminius at
the head of the army in order to make a speedy end of Hannibal. Talk
of this sort had proc