Those may be cowards and dastards who have something to look back upon; whom, flying through safe and unmolested roads, their own lands and their own country will receive: there is a necessity for you to be brave; and since all between victory and death is broken off from you by inevitable despair, either to conquer, or, if fortune should waver, to meet death rather in battle than flight.

If this be well fixed and determined in the minds of you all, I will repeat, you have already conquered: no stronger incentive to victory has been given to man by the immortal gods." 45.

When the minds of the soldiers on both sides had been animated to the contest by these exhortations, the Romans throw a bridge over the Ticinus, and, for the sake of defending the bridge, erect a fort on it.

The Carthaginian, while the Romans were engaged in this work, sends Maharbal with a squadron of five hundred Numidian horse, to lay waste the territories of the allies of the Roman people.

He orders that the Gauls should be spared as much as possible, and the minds of their chiefs be instigated to a revolt.