iving way beneath the foot more
readily by reason of the slope; and whether they assisted themselves
in rising by their hands or their knees, their supports themselves
giving way, they would stumble again; nor were there any stumps or
roots near; by pressing against which, one might with hand or foot
support himself; so that they only floundered on the smooth ice and
amid the melted snow. The beasts of burden sometimes also went into
this lower ice by merely treading upon it, at others they broke it
completely through, by the violence with which they struck in their
hoofs in their struggling, so that most of them, as if taken in a
trap, stuck in the hardened and deeply frozen ice.

37. At length, after the men and beasts of burden had been fatigued to
no purpose, the camp was pitched on the summit, the ground being
cleared for that purpose with great difficulty, so much snow was there
to be dug out and carried away. The soldiers being then set to make a
way down the cliff by which alone a passage could be effected, and it
being necessary that they should cut through the rocks, having felled
and lopped a number of large trees which grew around, they make a huge
pile of timber; and as soon as a strong wind fit for exciting the
flames arose, they set fire to it, and, pouring vinegar on the heated
stones, they render them soft and crumbling. They then open a way with
iron instruments through the rock thus heated by the fire, and soften
its declivities by gentle windings, so that not only the beasts of
burden, but also the elephants could be led down it. Four days were
spent about this rock, the beasts nearly perishing through hunger: for
the summits of the mountains are for the most part bare, and if there
is any pasture the snows bury it. The lower parts contain valleys, and
some sunny hills, and rivulets flowing beside woods, and scenes more
worthy of the abode of man. There the beasts of burden were sent out
to pasture, and rest given for three days to the men, fatigued with
forming the passage: they then descended into the plains, the country
and the dispositions of the inhabitants being now less rugged.

38. In this manner chiefly they came to Italy in the fifth month (as
some authors relate) after leaving New Carthage, having crossed the
Alps in fifteen days. What number of forces Hannibal had when he had
passed into Italy is by no means agreed upon by authors. Those who
state them at the highest, make mention of a h