ot greater cause
to fear, from his having transported his army in safety into Africa.
They said that the scene of action certainly was changed, but not the
danger. That Quintus Fabius, lately deceased, who had foretold how
arduous the contest would be, was used to predict, not without good
reason, that Hannibal would prove a more formidable enemy in his own
country than he had been in a foreign one; and that Scipio would have
to encounter not Syphax, a king of undisciplined barbarians, whose
armies Statorius, a man little better than a soldier's drudge, was
used to lead; nor his father-in-law, Hasdrubal, that most fugacious
general; nor tumultuary armies hastily collected out of a crowd of
half-armed rustics, but Hannibal, born in a manner in the pavilion
of his father, that bravest of generals, nurtured and educated in
the midst of arms, who served as a soldier formerly, when a boy, and
became a general when he had scarcely attained the age of manhood;
who, having grown old in victory, had filled Spain, Gaul, and Italy,
from the Alps to the strait, with monuments of his vast achievements;
who commanded troops who had served as long as he had himself; troops
hardened by the endurance of every species of suffering, such as it
is scarcely credible that men could have supported; stained a thousand
times with Roman blood, and bearing with them the spoils not only of
soldiers but of generals. That many would meet the eyes of Scipio in
battle who had with their own hands slain Roman praetors, generals,
and consuls; many decorated with crowns, in reward for having scaled
walls and crossed ramparts; many who had traversed the captured camps
and cities of the Romans. That the magistrates of the Roman people
had not then so many fasces as Hannibal could have carried before him,
having taken them from generals whom he had slain. While their minds
were harassed by these apprehensions, their anxiety and fears were
further increased from the circumstance, that, whereas they had been
accustomed to carry on war for several years, in different parts of
Italy, and within their view, with languid hopes, and without the
prospect of bringing it to a speedy termination, Scipio and Hannibal
had stimulated the minds of all, as generals prepared for a final
contest. Even those persons whose confidence in Scipio and hopes
of victory were great, were affected with anxiety, increasing in
proportion as they saw their completion approaching. The stat