the
most disorderly. The rest of the cavalry, in a close body, protecting,
not only with their arms, but also with their bodies, the consul, whom
they had received into the midst of them, brought him back to the camp
without any where giving way in disorder or precipitation. Coelius
attributes the honour of saving the consul to a slave, by nation a
Ligurian. I indeed should rather wish that the account about the son
was true, which also most authors have transmitted, and the report of
which has generally obtained credit.

47. This was the first battle with Hannibal; from which it clearly
appeared that the Carthaginian was superior in cavalry; and on that
account, that open plains, such as lie between the Po and the Alps,
were not suited to the Romans for carrying on the war. On the
following night, therefore, the soldiers being ordered to prepare
their baggage in silence, the camp broke up from the Ticinus, and they
hastened to the Po, in order that the rafts by which the consul had
formed a bridge over the river, being not yet loosened, he might lead
his forces across without disturbance or pursuit of the enemy. They
arrived at Placentia before Hannibal had ascertained that they had set
out from the Ticinus. He took, however, six hundred of those who
loitered on the farther bank, who were slowly unfastening the raft;
but he was not able to pass the bridge, as the whole raft floated down
the stream as soon as the ends were unfastened. Coelius relates that
Mago, with the cavalry and Spanish infantry, immediately swam the
river; and that Hannibal himself led the army across by fords higher
up the Po, the elephants being opposed to the stream in a line to
break the force of the current. These accounts can scarcely gain
credit with those who are acquainted with that river; for it is
neither probable that the cavalry could bear up against the great
violence of the stream, without losing their arms or horses, even
supposing that inflated bags of leather had transported all the
Spaniards; and the fords of the Po, by which an army encumbered with
baggage could pass, must have been sought by a circuit of many days'
march. Those authors are more credited by me, who relate that in the
course of two days a place was with difficulty found fit for forming a
bridge of rafts across the river, and that by this way the light-armed
Spanish cavalry was sent forward with Mago. Whilst Hannibal, delaying
beside the river to give audience to