Hannibal, therefore, when his own resolution was fixed to proceed in his course
and advance on Italy, having summoned an assembly, works upon the minds of the
soldiers in various ways, by reproof and exhortation. He said, that "he wondered
what sudden fear had seized breasts ever before undismayed: that through so
many years they had made their campaigns with conquest; nor had departed from
Spain before all the nations and countries which two opposite seas embrace,
were subjected to the Carthaginians. That then, indignant that the Romans demanded
those, whosoever had besieged Saguntum, to be delivered up to them, as on account
of a crime, they had passed the Iberus to blot out the name of the Romans, and
to emancipate the world. That then the way seemed long to no one, though they
were pursuing it from the setting to the rising of the sun. That now, when they
saw by far the greater part of their journey accomplished, the passes of the
Pyrenees surmounted, amid the most ferocious nations, the Rhone, that mighty
river, crossed, in spite of the opposition of so many thousand Gauls, the fury
of the river itself having been overcome, when they had the Alps in sight, the
other side of which was Italy, should they halt through weariness at the very
gates of the enemy, imagining the Alps to be -- what else than lofty mountains?
That supposing them to be higher than the summits of the Pyrenees, assuredly
no part of the earth reached the sky, nor was insurmountable by mankind. The
Alps in fact were inhabited and cultivated; -- produced and supported living beings.
Were they passable by a few men and impassable to armies? That those very ambassadors
whom they saw before them had not crossed the Alps borne aloft through the air
on wings; neither were their ancestors indeed natives of the soil, but settling
in Italy from foreign countries, had often as emigrants safely crossed these
very Alps in immense bodies, with their wives and children. To the armed soldier,
carrying nothing with him but the instruments of war, what in reality was impervious
or insurmountable? That Saguntum might be taken, what dangers, what toils were
for eight months undergone! Now, when their aim was Rome, the capital of the
world, could any thing appear so dangerous or difficult as to delay their undertaking?
That the Gauls had formerly gained possession of that very country which the
Carthaginian despairs of being able to approach. That they must, therefore,
either yield in spirit and valour to that nation which they had so often during
those times overcome; or look forward, as the end of their journey, to the plain
which spreads between the Tiber and the walls of Rome."
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