also uncertain to a
person on foot,) and rolling down besides gravelly stones, it affords
no firm or safe passage to those who enter it; and having been at that
time swollen by showers, it created great disorder among the soldiers
as they crossed, when, in addition to other difficulties, they were of
themselves confused by their own hurry and uncertain shouts.

32. 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 diffe