undred thousand foot and
twenty thousand horse; those who state them at the lowest, of twenty
thousand foot and six thousand horse. Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who
relates that he was made prisoner by Hannibal, would influence me most
as an authority, did he not confound the number by adding the Gauls
and Ligurians. Including these, (who, it is more probable, flocked to
him afterwards, and so some authors assert,) he says, that eighty
thousand foot and ten thousand horse were brought into Italy; and that
he had heard from Hannibal himself, that after crossing the Rhone he
had lost thirty-six thousand men, and an immense number of horses, and
other beasts of burden, among the Taurini, the next nation to the
Gauls, as he descended into Italy. As this circumstance is agreed on
by all, I am the more surprised that it should be doubtful by what
road he crossed the Alps; and that it should commonly be believed that
he passed over the Pennine mountain, and that thence [Footnote: from
Paenus, Carthaginian.] the name was given to that ridge of the Alps.
Coelius says, that he passed over the top of Mount Cremo; both which
passes would have brought him, not to the Taurini, but through the
Salasian mountaineers to the Libuan Gauls. Neither is it probable that
these roads into Gaul were then open, especially once those which,
lead to the Pennine mountain would have been unlocked up by nations
half German; nor by Hercules (if this argument has weight with any
one) do the Veragri, the inhabitants of this ridge, know of the name
being given to these mountains from the passage of the Carthaginians,
but from the divinity, whom the mountaineers style Penninus,
worshipped on the highest summit.

39. Very opportunely for the commencement of his operations, a war had
broken out with the Taurini, the nearest nation, against the
Insubrians; but Hannibal could not put his troops under arms to assist
either party, as they very chiefly felt the disorders they had before
contracted, in remedying them; for ease after toil, plenty after want,
and attention to their persons after dirt and filth, had variously
affected their squalid and almost savage-looking bodies. This was the
reason that Publius Cornelius, the consul, when he had arrived at Pisa
with his fleet, hastened to the Po, though the troops he received from
Manlius and Atilius were raw and disheartened by their late disgraces,
in order that he might engage the enemy when not yet recruited. Bu