, with
their loads, were rolled down like the fall of some vast fabric.
Though these disasters were shocking to view, Hannibal however kept
his place for a little, and kept his men together, lest he might
augment the tumult and disorder; but afterwards, when he saw the line
broken, and that there was danger that he should bring over his army,
preserved to no purpose if deprived of their baggage, he hastened down
from the higher ground; and though he had routed the enemy by the
first onset alone, he at the same time increased the disorder in his
own army: but that tumult was composed in a moment, after the roads
were cleared by the flight of the mountaineers; and presently the
whole army was conducted through, not only without being disturbed,
but almost in silence. He then took a fortified place, which was the
capital of that district, and the little villages that lay around it,
and fed his army for three days with the corn and cattle he had taken;
and during these three days, as the soldiers were neither obstructed
by the mountaineers, who had been daunted by the first engagement, nor
yet much by the ground, he made considerable way.

34. He then came 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,
follows 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
every thing around, and intent on every circumstance, followed with
the choicest of the infantry. When they came into a narrower pass,
lying on one side beneath