hose may be cowards and
dastards who have something to look back upon; whom, flying through
safe and unmolested roads, their own lands and their own country will
receive: there is a necessity for you to be brave; and since all
between victory and death is broken off from you by inevitable
despair, either to conquer, or, if fortune should waver, to meet death
rather in battle than flight. If this be well fixed and determined in
the minds of you all, I will repeat, you have already conquered: no
stronger incentive to victory has been given to man by the immortal
gods."

45. When the minds of the soldiers on both sides had been animated to
the contest by these exhortations, the Romans throw a bridge over the
Ticinus, and, for the sake of defending the bridge, erect a fort on
it. The Carthaginian, while the Romans were engaged in this work,
sends Maharbal with a squadron of five hundred Numidian horse, to lay
waste the territories of the allies of the Roman people. He orders
that the Gauls should be spared as much as possible, and the minds of
their chiefs be instigated to a revolt. When the bridge was finished,
the Roman army being led across into the territory of the Insubrians,
took up its station five miles from Victumviae. At this place Hannibal
lay encamped; and having quickly recalled Maharbal and the cavalry,
when he perceived that a battle was approaching, thinking that in
exhorting the soldiers enough could never be spoken or addressed by
way of admonition, he announces to them, when summoned to an assembly,
stated rewards, in expectation of which they might fight. He promised,
"that he would give them land in Italy, Africa, Spain, where each man
might choose, exempt from all burdens to the person who received it,
and to his children: if any one preferred money to land, he would
satisfy him in silver; if any of the allies wished to become citizens
of Carthage, he would grant them permission; if others chose rather to
return home, he would lend his endeavours that they should not wish
the situation of any one of their countrymen exchanged for their own."
To the slaves also who followed their masters he promised freedom, and
that he would give two slaves in place of each of them to their
masters. And that they might know that these promises were certain,
holding in his left hand a lamb, and in his right a flint, having
prayed to Jupiter and the other gods, that, if he was false to his
word, they would thus slay him