1Hannibal ordered the beasts, panicking and almost turning on their own side, to be driven from the centre of the line to the far end, on the left wing, against the Gallic auxiliaries. 1There they at once caused unmistakable flight, and this added fresh terror for the Romans when they saw their auxiliaries routed. 2And so, when about ten thousand men were now fighting in a ring, since they had been unable to escape any other way, through the middle of the Africans' 2line, where it had been strengthened by the Gallic auxiliaries, they broke through with great slaughter of the enemy, and since there was no return to the camp, cut off as they were by the river, and they could not make out clearly enough through the rain where to bring help to their own men, they marched straight to Placentia.
4After that many breakouts were made in all directions; 4and those who made for the river were either swallowed by its eddies or overwhelmed by the enemy as they hesitated to go in; 5of those who had been scattered here and there over the fields in flight, some, following the tracks of the retreating column, hastened to Placentia, while in others fear of the enemy produced the boldness to enter the river, and having crossed they reached the camp. 6Rain mixed with snow and the unbearable severity of the cold carried off many men and pack animals and almost all the elephants. 7The river Trebia was the limit of the Carthaginians' pursuit of the enemy, and they returned to camp so numb with cold that they scarcely felt the joy of victory.
8And so the following night, when the garrison of the camp and what was left of the soldiers after the flight, for the most part half-armed, were crossing the Trebia on rafts, the Carthaginians either noticed nothing because of the noise of the rain or, since they could no longer move for weariness and wounds, pretended not to notice; and while the Carthaginians kept still, the army was led in silent column by the consul Scipio to Placentia, and from there across the Po to Cremona, so that one colony should not be burdened with the winter quarters of two armies.