Res Gestae

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).

Publius Cornelius Scipio,

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father of the elder Africanus, when the Saguntines, famous both for their catastrophies and their loyalty, were besieged by the Africans[*](That is, the Carthaginians, in 218 B.C. See Hyde, pp. 197 ff.) with persistent obstinacy, wishing to help them, crossed to Spain with a fleet manned by a strong army. But as the city had been destroyed by a superior force,[*](After a siege of eight months.) and he was unable to overtake Hannibal, who had crossed the Rhone three days before and was hastening to the regions of Italy, by swift sailing he crossed the intervening space-which is not great-and watched at Genoa, a town of Liguria, for Hannibal’s descent from the mountains, so that if chance should give him the opportunity, he might fight with him in the plain while exhausted by the roughness of the roads.

At the same time, having an eye to the common welfare, he advised his brother, Gnaeus Scipio, to proceed to Spain and hold off Hasdrubal, who was planning to burst forth in like manner from that quarter. But Hannibal learned of this from deserters, and being of a nimble and crafty wit, came, under the guidance of natives from among the Taurini, through the Tricasini and the extreme edge of the Vocontii to the passes of the Tricorii. Starting out from there, he made another road, where it hitherto had been impassable; he hewed out a cliff which rose to a vast height by burning it with flames of immense power and crumbling it by pouring on vinegar;[*](Cf. Livy, xxi. 37, 1–3; Juvenal, x. 153; etc. Pliny, N.H. xxiii. 57, attributes this power to vinegar, but Polybius does not mention the story, which is doubted for various reasons.) then he marched along the river Druentia, dangerous with its shifting eddies, and seized upon the district of Etruria. So much about the Alps; let us now turn to the rest of the country.

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In early times, when these regions lay in darkness as savage, they are thought to have been threefold,[*](With this part of the account, cf. Caesar, B.G., i. 1.) divided into Celts (the same as the Gauls), the Aquitanians, and the Belgians, differing in language, habits and laws.