While the Carthaginians hesitated, Fabius rose, and gathering up the folds of his toga, as though in them he held the fate of the city, he cried, ‘I carry here peace and war. Choose, men of Carthage, which ye will.’
‘Give us whatever ye wish,’ answered the Senate.
Then shaking out the folds of his toga Fabius answered, ‘Then here I give ye war,’ and without another word he left the Senate-house.
‘With that spirit with which ye give it, shall we wage it,’ cried the Carthaginians, while the ambassador strode away.
As the shout of the Assembly followed him, Fabius knew that the men of Carthage did not dread his gift.
CHAPTER LVII
HANNIBAL PREPARES TO INVADE ITALY
The Romans thought it would be an easy matter to send an army to Spain to punish the young general for his daring defiance of the Senate. But as they soon found, it was not so simple as they had deemed.
Hannibal had ambitions beyond the wildest imaginations of the Romans, and before they had sent an army to Spain, he had left the country to invade Italy, for this was his great ambition.
In order to reach Italy, he determined to lead his army across the Alps, a feat that no one without the genius and the daring of the Carthaginian general could have ever hoped to accomplish.