1But to no one at all did that victory seem greater or more complete than to the consul himself; 1he was carried away with joy that he had won with the very part of the forces in which the other consul had been beaten: the soldiers' spirits were restored and revived, and there was no one except his colleague who wanted the fight put off; 2he, sick in mind more than in body, shrank from battle-line and weapons through the memory of his wound. 2But one should not grow old alongside a sick man. 3For why should time be put off or wasted any longer? 3What third consul, what other army were they waiting for?
4The camp of the Carthaginians was in Italy and almost within sight of the City. 4It was not Sicily and Sardinia, taken from the conquered, nor Spain this side of the Ebro that was being sought, but the Romans were being driven from their fathers' soil and the land in which they had been born. 'How deeply,' he said, 'would our fathers groan, who used to wage war around the walls of Carthage, if they saw us, their offspring, two consuls and two consular armies, cowering inside our camp in the middle of Italy, and the Carthaginian having made all the land between the Alps and the Apennines his own domain?' 6This he urged as he sat beside his sick colleague, this at headquarters, almost as if haranguing an assembly.
6He was spurred on too by the nearness of the time for the elections, lest the war be passed on to new consuls, and by the chance of turning the glory to himself alone while his colleague was ill. 7And so, though Cornelius disagreed in vain, he orders the soldiers to make ready for an imminent battle. 7Hannibal, since he saw what would be best for the enemy, had scarcely any hope that the consuls would do anything rash or improvident; 8but since he knew that the temper of one of them, known first by report and then from experience, was excitable and fierce, and believed it had grown fiercer through the successful clash with his raiders, he did not doubt that the opportunity for action was at hand.
9He was anxious and alert not to let slip any moment for this, while the enemy's soldiers were raw recruits, while his wound kept the better of the generals out of action, while the spirits of the Gauls were vigorous, whose huge numbers he knew would follow more sluggishly the farther they were drawn from home. 11Since for these and similar reasons he hoped for a battle soon and wished to bring one on if there were delay, and since Gallic scouts, safer for exploring what he wanted because they served in both camps, had reported that the Romans were ready for battle, the Carthaginian began to look about for a place for an ambush.