“THE SNOW WAS DEEP ON THE MOUNTAINS.”
At last, however, after about two weeks in the mountains, they reached the plain of the Po. Livy tells us that Hannibal himself confessed to having lost, from the time he crossed the Rhône, thirty-six thousand men and innumerable horses and other cattle. How many he brought with him into Italy is not known. An exaggerated estimate makes it a hundred thousand infantry and twenty-five thousand cavalry; but it was, perhaps, a third of that number.
The Roman poet, Silius Italicus, who lived in Vergil’s house, but not in his immortality, died just a hundred years after Christ. His verse-history, “Punica,” has come down to us complete. He too gives a description of Hannibal’s wonderful journey:—
“Lone Winter dwells upon those summits drear
And guards his mansion round the endless year.
Mustering from far around his grisly form
Black rains and hailstone-showers and clouds of storm.
Here in their wrathful kingdom whirlwinds roam
And fierce blasts struggle in their Alpine home.
The upward sight a swimming darkness shrouds