1It was in this way, for the most part, that they reached Italy, in the fifth month after leaving New Carthage, as some authorities state, having crossed the Alps in fifteen days. 1How large Hannibal's forces were when he had crossed into Italy is by no means agreed among the authorities. 2Those who give the highest figure write that there were a hundred thousand infantry and twenty thousand cavalry; those who give the lowest, twenty thousand infantry and six thousand cavalry. 3Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who writes that he was taken prisoner by Hannibal, would carry most weight as an authority, if he did not confuse the total by adding the Gauls and Ligurians: with these, he says, eighty thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry were brought — it is more likely that these flocked to him in Italy, and so some authorities state —; 5but he says he heard from Hannibal himself that after crossing the Rhône he had lost thirty-six thousand men and a huge number of horses and other pack animals.
5The Taurini Semigalli were the nearest people to him as he came down into Italy. 6Since this is agreed by all, I am the more surprised that there is dispute over where he crossed the Alps, and that it is commonly believed that he crossed by the Pennine pass — and that this ridge of the Alps got its name from that — while Coelius says he crossed by the ridge of Cremo; 7both of these passes would have brought him down not among the Taurini but through the Salassi Montani to the Libuan Gauls. 8Nor is it likely that those routes into Gaul were open at that time; 8those which lead to the Pennine, at any rate, would have been blocked by half-German tribes.
9Nor, by Hercules, do the Seduni Veragri, the inhabitants of that ridge, know of any name given to these mountains from the passage of the Carthaginians, if that happens to weigh with anyone, but from the god, worshipped on the highest summit, whom the mountaineers call Poeninus.