History of Rome

​A letter brought from Gaul by the praetor L. Porcius increased the alarm in Rome:

​it reported that Hasdrubal had moved from his winter quarters and was already crossing the Alps; that eight thousand Ligurians, enlisted and armed, would join him when he crossed into Italy, unless someone were sent to the Ligurians to keep them occupied in war; and that he himself, with an inadequate army, would advance as far as he deemed it safe.

​This letter compelled the consuls, having hastily completed the levy, to depart for their provinces earlier than they had intended, with the purpose that each should keep the enemy within his own province and not allow them to join or combine their forces.

​In this matter, the opinion of Hannibal helped most of all; for, although he believed that his brother would cross into Italy that summer, yet by recalling what he himself, in crossing now the Rhone, now the Alps, fighting against men and places, had endured for five months, ​he by no means expected so easy and rapid a passage; and this was the cause of his moving more slowly from his winter quarters.

​But for Hasdrubal, everything was faster and easier than his own or others’ expectation. For not only did the Arverni, and then other Gallic and Alpine tribes, receive him, but they even followed him to the war.

​And as he was leading his army through places that had been made passable for the most part by his brother’s passage, which before had been pathless, so also, the Alps having been made accessible by the familiarity of twelve years, he was now passing through milder human dispositions.

​For previously unvisited by foreigners and not accustomed themselves to see a stranger in their land, they were unsociable to all mankind. At first, being ignorant of where the Carthaginian was heading, they believed that their own cliffs and strongholds, and the plunder of their cattle and men, were being sought;

​but afterwards, the fame of the Punic War, by which Italy had been burning for the twelfth year, had sufficiently taught them that the Alps were only a pathway, and that two very powerful cities, separated from each other by a great space of sea and land, were contending for empire and wealth.

​These causes had opened the Alps to Hasdrubal.

​But the advantage gained by the speed of his march was ruined by his delay at Placentia, while he was besieging rather than assaulting it in vain.

​He had believed that the capture of a town in a plain would be easy, and the fame of the colony had induced him, thinking that he would strike great terror into the others by the destruction of that city.

​He did not only hinder himself by that siege, but he also held back Hannibal, who was already moving from winter quarters after the report of his passage, which was so much faster than his own expectation; ​for he was reflecting not only on how slow the siege of cities was, but also on how in vain he himself, returning victorious from the Trebia, had attempted that very same colony.