Go, tell them to dig up the standard, if, through fear, their hands are so benumbed that they cannot pluck it up." Then the army began to march; the chief officers, besides that they dissented from the plan, being terrified by the twofold prodigy; while the soldiery in general were elated by the confidence of their leader, since they regarded merely the hope he entertained, and not the reasons of the hope.
4.

Hannibal lays waste the country between the city Cortona and the lake Trasimenus, with all the devastation of war, the more to exasperate the enemy to revenge the injuries inflicted on his allies.
They had now reached a place formed by nature for an ambuscade, where the Trasimenus comes nearest to the mountains of Cortona.

A very narrow passage only intervenes, as though room enough just for that purpose had been left designedly; after that a somewhat wider plain opens itself, and then some hills rise up.

On these he pitches his camp, in full view, where he himself with his Spaniards and Africans only might be posted.

The Baliares and his other light troops he leads round the mountains; his cavalry he posts at the very entrance of the defile, some eminences conveniently concealing them; in order that when the Romans had entered, the cavalry advancing, every place might be enclosed by the lake and the mountains.