iving way, they
would tumble again; nor were there any stumps or roots near by
pressing against which one might with hand or foot support oneself; so
that they only floundered on the smooth ice and amidst the melted
snow. The beasts of burden sometimes also cut into this lower ice by
merely treading upon it, at others they broke it completely through,
by the violence with which they struck in their hoofs in their
struggling, so that most of them, as if taken in a trap, stuck in the
hardened and deeply frozen ice.

At length, after the men and beasts of burden had been fatigued to no
purpose, the camp was pitched on the summit, the ground being cleared
for that purpose with great difficulty, so much snow was there to be
dug out and carried away. The soldiers being then set to make a way
down the cliff, by which alone a passage could be effected, and it
being necessary that they should cut through the rocks, having felled
and lopped a number of large trees which grew around, they make a huge
pile of timber; and as soon as a strong wind fit for exciting the
flames arose, they set fire to it, and, pouring vinegar on the heated
stones, they render them soft and crumbling. They then open a way with
iron instruments through the rock thus heated by the fire, and soften
its declivities by gentle windings, so that not only the beasts of
burden, but also the elephants, could be led down it. Four days were
spent about this rock, the beasts nearly perishing through hunger; for
the summits of the mountains are for the most part bare, and if there
is any pasture the snows bury it. The lower parts contain valleys, and
some sunny hills, and rivulets flowing beside woods, and scenes more
worthy of the abode of man. There the beasts of burden were sent out
to pasture, and rest given for three days to the men, fatigued with
forming the passage; they then descended into the plains, the country
and the dispositions of the inhabitants being now less rugged.

In this manner chiefly they came to Italy, in the fifth month (as some
authors relate) after leaving New Carthage, having crossed the Alps
in fifteen days. What number of forces Hannibal had when he had passed
into Italy is by no means agreed upon by authors. Those who state them
at the highest make mention of a hundred thousand foot and twenty
thousand horse; those who state them at the lowest, of twenty thousand
foot and six thousand horse. Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who relates
that h