History of Rome

​Nero arrived first with all the cavalry, then Porcius, having followed, caught up with the light-armed troops.

​When they were harassing the exhausted column from every side and attacking it, and when the Carthaginian, having already abandoned the march which was like a flight, wished to measure out a camp on a hill above the river bank, ​Livius arrived with all the forces of infantry, equipped and armed not merely for a march, but for joining battle immediately.

​But when they united all their forces and the battle line was drawn up, Claudius drew up the battle on the right wing, Livius on the left, and the center of the line was given to the praetor to defend.

​Hasdrubal, having abandoned the fortification of the camp when he saw that he must fight, placed the elephants in the front line before the standards, and around them on the left wing, opposite Claudius, he opposed the Gauls, not trusting them so much as believing they were feared by the enemy;

​he himself took the right wing, opposite Marcus Livius, for himself and the Spaniards—and there, in the veteran soldier, he had his greatest hope;

​the Ligurians were placed in the center behind the elephants. But the line was longer than it was wide; a projecting hill protected the Gauls.

​That front which the Spaniards held clashed with the left wing of the Romans; the entire right wing, standing out beyond the battle, remained inactive;

​the hill opposite prevented them from attacking either from the front or from the flank. Between Livius and Hasdrubal a huge contest was joined, and a terrible slaughter was dealt out on both sides.

​There were both generals, there the greater part of the Roman infantry and cavalry, there the Spaniards, veteran soldiers experienced in Roman warfare, and the Ligurians, a race hardy in arms. To the same place were turned the elephants, which at the first onset had thrown the vanguard into confusion and had already moved the standards from their place;

​then, as the contest and the shouting grew, they could no longer be controlled and moved between the two lines, as if uncertain to whom they belonged, not unlike ships wandering without a rudder.

​Claudius, shouting to his soldiers, “Why then have we traversed so long a march with headlong speed?” when he had tried in vain to advance the standards against the opposite hill, ​after he saw that it was impossible to penetrate to the enemy in that quarter, having withdrawn some cohorts from the right wing, where he saw there would be an inactive post rather than a battle, ​led them around behind the line, and fell upon the right flank of the enemy, unexpected not only by the enemy but also by his own men; and such was their speed that, having shown themselves on the flank, they were soon fighting in the rear.

​Thus from all sides, from the front, from the flank, from the rear, the Spaniards and Ligurians were slaughtered, and the carnage had already reached the Gauls. There was the least amount of fighting there:

​for both a great part were away from their standards, having slipped away during the night and stretched themselves in sleep everywhere through the fields, and those who were present, exhausted by the march and lack of sleep, with bodies most unable to endure labor, could scarcely carry their arms on their shoulders;

​and now it was midday, and thirst and heat offered them, gasping, in abundance to be slaughtered and captured.