me to another state, abounding, for a mountainous country,
with inhabitants, where he was nearly overcome, not by open war, but
by his own arts of treachery and ambuscade. Some old men, governors of
forts, came as deputies to the Carthaginian, professing, "that having
been warned by the useful example of the calamities of others, they
wished rather to experience the friendship than the hostilities of the
Carthaginians; they would, therefore, obediently execute his commands,
and begged that he would accept of a supply of provisions, guides of
his march, and hostages for the sincerity of their promises."
Hannibal, when he had answered them in a friendly manner, thinking
that they should neither be rashly trusted nor yet rejected, lest if
repulsed they might openly become enemies, having received the
hostages whom they proffered, and made use of the provisions which
they of their own accord brought down to the road, followed their
guides, by no means as among a people with whom he was at peace, but
with his line of march in close order. The elephants and cavalry
formed the van of the marching body; he himself, examining everything
around, and intent on every circumstance, followed with the choicest
of his infantry. When they came into a narrower pass, lying on one
side beneath an overhanging eminence, the barbarians, rising at once
on all sides from their ambush, assail them in front and rear, both at
close quarters and from a distance, and roll down huge stones on the
army. The most numerous body of men prest on the rear; against whom
the infantry facing about and directing their attack made it very
obvious that, had not the rear of the army been well supported, a
great loss must have been sustained in that pass. Even as it was, they
came to the extremity of danger, and almost to destruction; for while
Hannibal hesitated to lead down his division into the defile, because,
tho he himself was a protection to the cavalry, he had not in the same
way left any aid to the infantry in the rear; the mountaineers,
charging obliquely, and on having broken through the middle of the
army, took possession of the road; and one night was spent by Hannibal
without his cavalry and baggage....

On the standards being moved forward at daybreak, when the army
proceeded slowly over all places entirely blocked up with snow, and
languor and despair strongly appeared in the countenances of all,
Hannibal, having advanced before the standards, and