27.39
The
excitement and alarm in Rome were heightened by a despatch from L.
Porcius, the propraetor commanding in Gaul. He announced that Hasdrubal
had left his winter quarters and was actually crossing the Alps. He was to be
joined by a force of 8000 men raised and equipped amongst the Ligurians,
unless a Roman army were sent into Liguria to occupy the attention of the
Gauls. Porcius added that he would himself advance as far as he safely could
with such a weak army. The receipt of this despatch made the consuls hurry
on the enlistment, and on its completion they left for their provinces at an
earlier date than they had fixed. Their intention was that each of them should
keep his enemy in his own province and not allow the brothers to unite or
concentrate their forces. They were materially assisted by a miscalculation
which Hannibal made. He quite expected his brother to cross the Alps during
the summer, but remembering his own experience in the passage first of the
Rhone and then of the Alps, and how for five months he had had to carry on
an exhausting struggle against man and against nature, he had no idea that
Hasdrubal's passage would be as easy and rapid as it really was. Owing to
this mistake he was too late in moving out of his winter quarters. Hasdrubal,
however, had a more expeditious march and met with fewer difficulties than
either he or anyone else expected. Not only did the Arverni and the other
Gallic and Alpine tribes give him a friendly reception, but they followed his
standard. He was, moreover, marching mainly over roads made by his
brother where before there were none, and as the Alps had now been
traversed to and fro for twelve years he found the natives less savage.
Previously they had never visited strange lands nor been accustomed to
seeing strangers in their own country; they had held no intercourse with the
rest of the world. Not knowing at first the destination of the Carthaginian
general, they imagined that he wanted their rocks and strongholds and
intended to carry off their men and cattle as plunder. Then when they heard
about the Punic War with which Italy had been alight for twelve years, they
quite understood that the Alps were only a passage from one country to
another, and that the struggle lay between two mighty cities, separated by a
vast stretch of sea and land, which were contending for power and dominion.
This was the reason why the Alps lay open to Hasdrubal. But whatever
advantage he gained by the rapidity of his march was forfeited by the time he
wasted at Placentia, where he commenced a fruitless investment instead of
attempting a direct assault. Lying as it did in flat open country he thought
that the town would be taken without difficulty, and that the capture of such
an important colony would deter the others from offering any resistance. Not
only was his own advance hampered by this investment, but he also retarded
Hannibal's movements, who, on learning of his brother's unexpectedly rapid
march, had quitted his winter quarters, for Hannibal knew what a slow
business sieges usually are and had not forgotten his own unsuccessful
attempt on that very colony after his victory at the Trebia.