icipate any new
difficulty till he should arrive at the Rhone. He knew very well that
that was a broad and rapid river, and that he must cross it near its
mouth, where the water was deep and the banks low; and, besides, it
was not impossible that the Romans who were coming to meet him, under
Cornelius Scipio, might have reached the Rhone before he should arrive
there, and be ready upon the banks to dispute his passage. He had sent
forward, therefore, a small detachment in advance, to reconnoiter the
country and select a route to the Rhone, and if they met with no
difficulties to arrest them there, they were to go on till they
reached the Alps, and explore the passages and defiles through which
his army could best cross those snow-covered mountains.

It seems that before he reached the Pyrenees--that is, while he was
upon the Spanish side of them, some of the tribes through whose
territories he had to pass undertook to resist him, and he,
consequently, had to attack them and reduce them by force; and then,
when he was ready to move on, he left a guard in the territories thus
conquered to keep them in subjection. Rumors of this reached Gaul. The
Gauls were alarmed for their own safety. They had not intended to
oppose Hannibal so long as they supposed that he only wished for a
safe passage through their country on his way to Italy; but now, when
they found, from what had occurred in Spain, that he was going to
conquer the countries he traversed as he passed along, they became
alarmed. They seized their arms, and assembled in haste at Ruscino,
and began to devise measures of defense. Ruscino was the same place as
that in which the Roman embassadors met the great council of the Gauls
on their return to Italy from Carthage.

While this great council, or, rather, assembly of armies, was
gathering at Ruscino, full of threats and anger, Hannibal was at
Illiberis, a town at the foot of the Pyrenean Mountains. He seems to
have had no fear that any opposition which the Gauls could bring to
bear against him would be successful, but he dreaded the delay. He
was extremely unwilling to spend the precious months of the early
summer in contending with such foes as they, when the road to Italy
was before him. Besides, the passes of the Alps, which are difficult
and laborious at any time, are utterly impracticable except in the
months of July and August. At all other seasons they are, or were in
those days, blocked up with impassable sno