Publius Cornelius the consul, about three days after Hannibal moved from the
bank of the Rhone, had come to the camp of the enemy, with his army drawn up
in square, intending to make no delay in fighting: but when he saw the fortifications
deserted, and that he could not easily come up with them so far in advance before
him, he returned to the sea and his fleet, in order more easily and safely to
encounter Hannibal when descending from the Alps. But that Spain, the province
which he had obtained by lot, might not be destitute of Roman auxiliaries, he
sent his brother Cneius Scipio with the principal part of his forces against
Hasdrubal, not only to defend the old allies and conciliate new, but also to
drive Hasdrubal out of Spain. He himself, with a very small force, returned
to Genoa, intending to defend Italy with the army which was around the Po. From
the Druentia, by a road that lay principally through plains, Hannibal arrived
at the Alps without molestation from the Gauls that inhabit those regions. Then,
though the scene had been previously anticipated from report, (by which uncertainties
are wont to be exaggerated,) yet the height of the mountains when viewed so
near, and the snows almost mingling with the sky, the shapeless huts situated
on the cliffs, the cattle and beasts of burden withered by the cold, the men
unshorn and wildly dressed, all things, animate and inanimate, stiffened with
frost, and other objects more terrible to be seen than described, renewed their
alarm. To them, marching up the first acclivities, the mountaineers appeared
occupying the heights over head; who, if they had occupied the more concealed
valleys, might, by rushing out suddenly to the attack, have occasioned great
flight and havoc. Hannibal orders them to halt, and having sent forward Gauls
to view the ground, when he found there was no passage that way, he pitches
his camp in the widest valley he could find, among places all rugged and precipitous.
Then, having learned from the same Gauls, when they had mixed in conversation
with the mountaineers, from whom they differed little in language and manners,
that the pass was only beset during the day, and that at night each withdrew
to his own dwelling, he advanced at the dawn to the heights, as if designing
openly and by day to force his way through the defile. The day then being passed
in feigning a different attempt from that which was in preparation, when they
had fortified the camp in the same place where they had halted, as soon as he
perceived that the mountaineers had descended from the heights, and that the
guards were withdrawn, having lighted for show a greater number of fires than
was proportioned to the number that remained, and having left the baggage in
the camp, with the cavalry and the principal part of the infantry, he himself
with a party of light-armed, consisting of all the most courageous of his troops,
rapidly cleared the defile, and took post on those very heights which the enemy
had occupied.
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