1Thinking that Spain too should not be neglected, and all the less so because he was well aware that it had been visited by Roman envoys to tempt the minds of its chiefs, he assigns that province to his brother Hasdrubal, an energetic man, and strengthens it chiefly with African troops: eleven thousand eight hundred and fifty African infantry, three hundred Ligurians and five hundred Balearians. 3To these infantry auxiliaries were added four hundred and fifty Libyphoenician horsemen, a race of Carthaginians mixed with Africans, and about eighteen hundred Numidians and Moors who dwell by the Ocean, and a small band of Ilergetes from Spain, three hundred horsemen, and, so that no kind of land force should be lacking, twenty-one elephants.
4A fleet was also given him to protect the sea coast, because it could be believed that the Romans would then too wage war in the arm in which they had been victorious: fifty quinqueremes, two quadriremes and five triremes; 4but only thirty-two quinqueremes and five triremes were fitted out and equipped with oarsmen. 5From Gades the army returns to its winter quarters at Carthage; 5and setting out from there he leads it past the city of Onusa to the Ebro along the sea coast. 6There, the story goes, he saw in his sleep a young man of godlike appearance, who said that he had been sent by Jupiter as Hannibal's guide into Italy: so he should follow and never turn his eyes away from him.
7At first, it is said, he followed in fear, looking neither around nor behind him; 7then, with the curiosity of human nature, as he turned over in his mind what it could be that he had been forbidden to look back at, he could not control his eyes; 8then he saw behind him a serpent of wondrous size moving along with an immense destruction of trees and thickets, and behind it a storm cloud following with a crash of thunder. 9Then, when he asked what that great mass was and what the portent meant, he heard that it was the devastation of Italy: he should go on his way and ask no further, and let the fates remain hidden.