1Meanwhile, while the elephants were being taken across, Hannibal had sent five hundred Numidian horsemen towards the Roman camp to spy out where the forces were, how large they were and what they were preparing. 2This squadron of cavalry is met by the three hundred Roman horsemen sent, as was said before, from the mouth of the Rhône. 2A battle is fought more fiercely than the number of combatants would suggest; 3for besides many wounds the slaughter too was almost equal on both sides, and the flight and panic of the Numidians gave victory to the Romans when they were already quite exhausted. 3Of the victors about a hundred and forty fell, and not all Romans but some Gauls; of the vanquished more than two hundred.
4This beginning and at the same time omen of the war portended to the Romans a successful outcome to the whole, but a victory by no means bloodless and in a doubtful struggle. 4When, after the action had been fought in this way, each side had returned to its own commander, Scipio could settle on no plan except to shape his own efforts by the plans and undertakings of the enemy; and Hannibal, uncertain whether to press on with his march into Italy as begun or to join battle with the first Roman army that had presented itself, was turned from an immediate fight by the arrival of envoys of the Boii and of the chieftain Magalus, who, declaring that they would be his guides on the way and his partners in danger, advise that Italy should be attacked with the war untouched and his strength nowhere tapped beforehand.
7The rank and file did indeed fear the enemy, since the memory of the former war had not yet faded, but they dreaded still more the immense journey and the Alps, a thing fearful by report at least to those who had not experienced them.