whom they saw marching among them. They now not only
opposed no resistance to the passage of Hasdrubal, but many of them, out
of love of enterprise and plunder, or allured by the high pay that he
offered, took service with him; and thus he advanced upon Italy with an
army that gathered strength at every league. It is said, also, that some
of the most important engineering works which Hannibal had constructed
were found by Hasdrubal still in existence, and materially favored the
speed of his advance. He thus emerged into Italy from the Alpine valleys
much sooner than had been anticipated. Many warriors of the Ligurian
tribes joined him; and, crossing the River Po, he marched down its
southern bank to the city of Placentia, which he wished to secure as a
base for his future operations. Placentia resisted him as bravely as it
had resisted Hannibal twelve years before, and for some time Hasdrubal
was occupied with a fruitless siege before its walls.

Six armies were levied for the defence of Italy when the long-dreaded
approach of Hasdrubal was announced. Seventy thousand Romans served in
the fifteen legions of which, with an equal number of Italian allies,
those armies and the garrisons were composed. Upward of thirty thousand
more Romans were serving in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. The whole
number of Roman citizens of an age fit for military duty scarcely
exceeded a hundred and thirty thousand. The census taken before the
commencement of the war had shown a total of two hundred and seventy
thousand, which had been diminished by more than half during twelve
years. These numbers are fearfully emphatic of the extremity to which
Rome was reduced, and of her gigantic efforts in that great agony of her
fate. Not merely men, but money and military stores, were drained to the
utmost, and if the armies of that year should be swept off by a
repetition of the slaughters of Thrasymene and Cannae all felt that Rome
would cease to exist.

Even if the campaign were to be marked by no decisive success on either
side her ruin seemed certain. In South Italy, Hannibal had either
detached Rome's allies from her or had impoverished them by the ravages
of his army. If Hasdrubal could have done the same in Upper Italy; if
Etruria, Umbria, and Northern Latium had either revolted or been laid
waste, Rome must have sunk beneath sheer starvation, for the hostile or
desolated territory would have yielded no supplies of corn for her
population, and