an overhanging eminence, the barbarians,
rising at once on all sides from their ambush, assail them in front
and rear, both at close quarters and from a distance, and roll down
huge stones on the army. The most numerous body of men pressed on the
rear; against whom the infantry, facing about and directing their
attack, made it very obvious, that had not the rear of the army been
well supported, a great loss must have been sustained in that pass.
Even as it was they came to the extremity of danger, and almost to
destruction: for while Hannibal hesitates to lead down his division
into the defile, because, though he himself was a protection to the
cavalry, lie had not in the same way left any aid to the infantry in
the rear; the mountaineers, charging obliquely, and on having broken
through the middle of the army, took possession of the road; and one
night was spent by Hannibal without his cavalry and baggage.

35. Next day, the barbarians running in to the attack between (the two
divisions) less vigorously, the forces were re-united, and the defile
passed, not without loss, but yet with a greater destruction of beasts
of burden than of men. From that time the mountaineers fell upon them
in smaller parties, more like an attack of robbers than war, sometimes
on the van, sometimes on the rear, according as the ground afforded
them advantage, or stragglers advancing or loitering gave them an
opportunity. Though the elephants were driven through steep and narrow
roads with great loss of time, yet wherever they went they rendered
the army safe from the enemy, because men unacquainted with such
animals were afraid of approaching too nearly. On the ninth day they
came to a summit of the Alps, chiefly through places trackless; and
after many mistakes of their way, which were caused either by the
treachery of the guides, or, when they were not trusted, by entering
valleys at random, on their own conjectures of the route. For two days
they remained encamped on the summit; and rest was given to the
soldiers, exhausted with toil and fighting: and several beasts of
burden, which had fallen down among the rocks, by following the track
of the army arrived at the camp. A fall of snow, it being now the
season of the setting of the constellation of the Pleiades, caused
great fear to the soldiers, already worn out with weariness of so many
hardships. On the standards being moved forward at daybreak, when the
army proceeded slowly over all p