In the year 534 from the founding of the City, Hannibal, the general of the Carthaginians, at last, in the eighth month, destroyed Saguntum, a most flourishing city of Spain and a friend of the Roman people — having first attacked it in war, then encircled it with a siege and tormented it with famine, while it bravely endured everything, fitting and unfitting, out of regard for the faith which it had pledged to the Romans.
1 Anno ab urbe condita DXXXIIII Hannibal Poenorum imperator Saguntum florentissimam Hispaniae ciuitatem, amicam populi Romani, primum bello inpetitam, deinde obsidione cinctam et fame excruciatam omniaque fortiter contemplatione fidei, quam Romanis deuouerant, digna indignaque tolerantem octauo demum mense deleuit.
The envoys of the Romans who were sent to him he most insultingly kept even from his presence.
2 legatos Romanorum ad se missos iniuriosissime etiam a conspectu suo abstinuit.
Thereafter, out of hatred of the Roman name — a hatred which, though most faithless in other things, he had most faithfully sworn before the altars to his father Hamilcar when he was nine years old — in the consulship of Publius Cornelius Scipio and Publius Sempronius Longus he crossed the Pyrenees, opened a way with the sword among the fiercest nations of the Gauls, and on the ninth day at last came from the Pyrenees to the Alps;1
3 exinde odio Romani nominis, quod patri Hamilcari, cum esset nouem annos natus, fidelissime alias infidelissimus ante aras iurauerat, P. Cornelio Scipione et P. Sempronio Longo consulibus Pyrenaeos montes transgressus inter ferocissimas Gallorum gentes ferro uiam aperuit et nono demum die a Pyrenaeo ad Alpes peruenit;
1The consul of 218 BC was Tiberius Sempronius Longus; Orosius gives the praenomen Publius.
there, while he overcame in battle the mountain Gauls who strove to drive him back from the ascent, and cut through the pathless crags with fire and iron, he was delayed four days, and on the fifth day at last reached the plains with the greatest toil.
4 ubi dum montanos Gallos, repellere ab ascensu obnitentes, bello superat atque inuias rupes igni ferroque rescindit, quadriduum commoratus quinto demum die cum maximo labore ad plana peruenit.
They reckon that his army at that time numbered a hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse.
5 fuisse tunc exercitum eius in centum milibus peditum et uiginti milibus equitum definiunt.
The consul Scipio was the first to meet Hannibal; and when battle was joined at the Ticinus, he himself was gravely wounded, and escaped, delivered from death itself by his son Scipio, still only a boy in the toga praetexta, who was afterwards surnamed Africanus. Almost the whole Roman army was slain there.
6 Scipio consul Hannibali primus occurrit commissoque proelio apud Ticinum ipse grauiter uulneratus per Scipionem filium admodum praetextatum, qui post Africanus cognominatus est, ab ipsa morte liberatus euasit. caesus est ibi omnis paene Romanus exercitus.
Then battle was fought, under the same consul, at the river Trebia, and again the Romans were overcome with equal disaster. The consul Sempronius, on learning of his colleague’s misfortune, returned from Sicily with his army; he likewise engaged at the same river and, having lost his army, escaped almost alone. In that war, however, Hannibal too was wounded.2
7 pugnatum deinde eodem consule ad flumen Treuiam iterumque Romani pari clade superati sunt. Sempronius consul cognito collegae casu a Sicilia cum exercitu rediit; qui similiter apud eundem fluuium congressus, amisso exercitu paene solus evasit. in eo tamen bello etiam Hannibal sauciatus est.
2There was only one battle at the Trebia (218 BC), fought by Sempronius after he had joined the wounded Scipio; Orosius makes two of it.
Afterwards, when he was crossing into Etruria at the beginning of spring, he was caught by a storm on the heights of the Apennines, and for two days on end, shut in and weighed down by the snows with his army, he stood frozen and unable to move. There a great number of men, very many beasts of burden and almost all the elephants perished from the bitterness of the cold.
8 qui postea, cum in Etruriam primo uere transiret, in summo Appennino tempestate correptus, biduo continuo inmobiliter cum exercitu niuibus conclusus et onustus obriguit. ubi magnus hominum numerus, iumenta conplurima, elephanti paene omnes frigoris acerbitate perierunt.
Meanwhile the other Scipio, the brother of the consul Scipio, waged very many wars in Spain, and also defeated and captured Mago, a general of the Carthaginians.3
9 at uero alter tunc Scipio, frater consulis Scipionis, in Hispania plurima bella gessit, Magonem quoque Poenorum ducem bello uicit et cepit.
3The Carthaginian general whom Gnaeus Scipio defeated and captured at Cissa in 218 BC was Hanno, not Mago.