To resume my narrative — on this occasion he assembled his soldiers and exhorted them not to be cast down by their recent reverse.
The Romans, he said, were never beaten by the Carthaginians owing to the superior courage of the latter, but it was all due to the treachery of the Celtiberians and to rashness, the generals having been cut off from each other owing to their trust in the alliance of that people.
"Both of these disadvantages," he said, "now affect the enemy; for they are encamped at a long distance apart, and by their tyrannical treatment of their allies they have estranged them all and made them their enemies.
So that some of them are already negotiating with us, while the rest, as soon as they have the courage to do it and see that we have crossed the river, will be glad to come in not so much out of affection for us as from eagerness to be avenged on the Carthaginians for their brutal conduct.
But the chief point is that the enemy's commanders are on ill terms with each other and will not readily engage us with their united forces, while if they attack us separately it will be easy to overcome them."
He therefore begged his soldiers to take all this into consideration and cross the river confidently.
After that it would be the business of himself and the other commanders to decide what was next to be done. Having made this speech he left his colleague Marcus Silanus with three thousand foot and five hundred horse at the ford to watch over the allies on the near side of the river, and himself began to cross with the rest of his forces, revealing his plan to no one.
The fact was, he had decided not to do any of the things he had publicly announced, but to invest suddenly the town in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Spain&groupId=983&placeId=1735">Spain</a> to which they had given the name of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Carthage&groupId=441&placeId=820">Carthage</a>.
This we take as the first and strongest confirmation of the view I have just expressed.
He was now but twenty-seven years of age, and yet he in the first place took in hand a situation pronounced by most people as desperate owing to the serious nature of the recent reverses,
and secondly in dealing with it he put aside the measures obvious to anyone and planned out and decided on a course which neither his enemies nor his friends expected.
There was nothing in all this that was not due to most close calculation.
Walbank Commentary