1From there they came to another people, populous with farmers for a mountain folk. 1There he was nearly trapped, not by open warfare but by their own arts, by trickery and ambush. 2Elders, the chiefs of the forts, come to the Carthaginian as envoys, saying that, taught by the misfortunes of others, a useful example, they preferred to experience the friendship rather than the force of the Carthaginians; 3that they would therefore obediently do whatever they were ordered; 3let him accept provisions and guides for the march, and hostages as a pledge of their promises. 4Hannibal, thinking that they should neither be trusted rashly nor spurned, lest if rebuffed they should become open enemies, answered them graciously, accepted the hostages they offered and made use of the provisions which they had themselves brought down to the road, and then follows their guides, with his column by no means arranged as though among peaceful peoples.
5The head of the column was made up of the elephants and the cavalry; 6he himself marched behind with the main strength of the infantry, looking all around and alert to everything. 6When they came into a narrower road, overhung on one side by a ridge above, the barbarians rose up on every side from ambush, in front and behind, attacked them at close quarters and from a distance, and rolled huge rocks down onto the column. 7The greatest mass of men pressed on the rear. 7The infantry line, turned to face them, made it plain that, had the rear of the column not been strengthened, a huge disaster would have had to be suffered in that pass.
8Even then they came to the very extremity of danger and almost to destruction. 8For while Hannibal hesitates to send the column down into the defile, because, just as he himself was a protection to the cavalry, so the infantry had no support left behind them, the mountaineers, running in from the flanks, cut through the middle of the column and occupied the road, and Hannibal spent one night without his cavalry and baggage.