After his men had been impressed by watching several pairs of combatants Hannibal dismissed them, and afterwards summoned them round him, when he is reported to have made the following speech: "Soldiers, you have seen in the fate of others an example how to conquer or to die. [2] If the feelings with which you watched them lead you to form a similar estimate of your own fortunes we are victors. That was no idle spectacle but a picture, as it were, of your own condition. [3] Fortune, I am inclined to think has bound you in heavier chains and imposed upon you a sterner necessity than on your captives. [4] You are shut in on the right hand and on the left by two seas, and you have not a single ship in which to make your escape; around you flows the Po, a greater river than the Rhone and a more rapid one; the barrier of the Alps frowns upon you behind, those Alps which you could hardly cross when your strength and vigour were unimpaired. [5] Here, soldiers, on this spot where you have for the first time encountered the enemy you must either conquer or die. The same Fortune which has imposed upon you the necessity of fighting also holds out rewards of victory, rewards as great as any which men are wont to solicit from the immortal gods. [6] Even if we were only going to recover Sicily and Sardinia, possessions which were wrested from our fathers, they would be prizes ample enough to satisfy us. [7] Everything that the Romans now possess, which they have won through so many triumphs, all that they have amassed, will become yours, together with those who own it. Come then, seize your arms and with the help of heaven win this splendid reward. [8] You have spent time enough in hunting cattle on the barren mountains of Lusitania and Celtiberia, and finding no recompense for all your toils and dangers; [9] now the hour has come for you to enter upon rich and lucrative campaigns and to earn rewards which are worth the earning, after your long march over all those mountains and rivers, and through all those nations in arms. [10] Here Fortune has vouchsafed an end to your toils, here she will vouchsafe a reward worthy of all your past services.
[11] "Do not think because the war, being against Rome, bears a great name, that therefore victory will be correspondingly difficult. Many a despised enemy has fought a long and costly fight; nations and kings of high renown have been beaten with a very slight effort. [12] For, setting aside the glory which surrounds the name of Rome, what point is there in which they can be compared to you? [13] To say nothing of your twenty years' campaigning earned on with all your courage, all your good fortune, from the pillars of Hercules, from the shores of the ocean, from the furthest corners of the earth, through the midst of all the most warlike peoples of Spain and Gaul, you have arrived here as victors. [14] The army with which you will fight is made up of raw levies who were beaten, conquered, and hemmed in by the Gauls this very summer, who are strangers to their general, and he a stranger to them. [15] I, reared as I was, almost born, in the headquarters tent of my father, a most distinguished general, I, who have subjugated Spain and Gaul, who have conquered not only the Alpine tribes, but, what is a much greater task, the Alps themselves-am I to compare myself with this six months' general who has deserted his own [16??] army, who, if any one were to point out to him the Romans and the Carthaginians after their standards were removed, would, I am quite certain, not know which army he was in command of as consul? [17] I do not count it a small matter, soldiers, that there is not a man amongst you before whose eyes I have not done many a soldierly deed, or to whom I, who have witnessed and attested his courage, could not recount his own gallant exploits and the time and place where they were performed. [18] I was your pupil before I was your commander, and I shall go into battle surrounded by men whom I have commended and rewarded thousands of times against those who know nothing of each other, who are mutual strangers.
