1Hannibal lays waste with every calamity of war the land between the city of Cortona and Lake Trasimene, to sharpen the enemy's anger the more to avenge the wrongs done to the allies. 2And now he had reached a place made by nature for an ambush, where Lake Trasimene comes closest beneath the hills of Cortona. 2Between them lies only a very narrow road, as if room had been left on purpose for this very thing; 2then a somewhat wider plain opens out; 2beyond it hills rise up. 3There he pitches a camp in the open, where he himself, with the Africans and Spaniards only, might take up position; 3the Balearians and the rest of the light-armed troops he leads round behind the hills; 3the cavalry he posts at the very entrance of the pass, where hillocks conveniently concealed them, so that, when the Romans had entered, with the cavalry thrown across their path, everything would be shut in by the lake and the mountains.
4Flaminius, having reached the lake at sunset the day before, on the next day, without reconnoitring, when the light was scarcely yet clear enough, passed through the narrows, and after the column began to spread out into the more open plain, caught sight only of that part of the enemy that was facing him; 4the ambush behind him and above his head went undetected. 5When the Carthaginian had what he had aimed at, the enemy shut in by the lake and the mountains and surrounded by his forces, he gives all of them the signal to attack together. 6When they had run down, each by the way nearest to him, the event was all the more sudden and unexpected for the Romans, because a mist rising from the lake had settled thicker on the plain than on the mountains, and the enemy columns, being quite visible to one another from the many hills, had run down all the more simultaneously.
7The Roman realised that he was surrounded from the shouting that arose on every side before he could see clearly, and fighting began on his front and flanks before the line could be properly drawn up or arms got ready and swords drawn.