perfidy, abide by it.  In addition to this he gave what turn he pleased to his conference with Hannibal, which was held in private, and was therefore open to misrepresentation.  He augured success that the gods had exhibited the same omens to them on going out to battle on the present occasion, as they had to their fathers when they fought at the islands Aegates.  He told them that the termination of the war, and their hardships, had arrived; that they had within their grasp the spoils of Carthage, and the power of returning home to their country, their parents, their children, their wives, and their household gods.  He delivered these observations with a body so erect, and with a countenance so full of exultation, that one would have supposed that he had already conquered.  He then drew up his troops, posting the hastati in front, the principes behind them, and closing his rear line with the triarii.

33.  He did not draw up his cohorts in close order, but each before their respective standards; placing the companies at some distance from each other, so as to leave a space through which the elephants of the enemy passing might not at all break their ranks.  Laelius, whom he had employed before as lieutenant-general, but this year as quaestor, by special appointment, according to a decree of the senate, he posted with the Italian cavalry in the left wing, Masinissa and the Numidians in the right.  The open spaces between the companies of those in the van he filled with velites, which then formed the Roman light-armed troops, with an injunction, that on the charge of the elephants they should either retire behind the files, which extended in a right line, or, running to the right and left and placing themselves by the side of those in the van, afford a passage by which the elephants might rush in between weapons on both sides.  Hannibal, in order to terrify the enemy, drew up his elephants in front, and he had eighty of them, being more than he had ever had in any battle; behind these his Ligurian and Gallic auxiliaries, with Balearians and Moors intermixed.  In the second line he placed the Carthaginians, Africans, and a legion of Macedonians; then, leaving a moderate interval, he formed a reserve of Italian troops, consisting principally of Bruttians, more of whom had followed him on his departure from Italy by compulsion and necessity than by choice.  His cavalry also he placed in the wings, the Carthaginian occupying the right, the Numidian the left.  Various were the means of exhortation employed in an army consisting of a mixture of so many different kinds of men; men differing in language, customs laws, arms, dress, and appearance, and in the motives for serving.  To the auxiliaries, the prospect both of their present pay, and many times more from the spoils, was held out.  The Gauls were stimulated by their peculiar and inherent animosity against the Romans.  To the Ligurians the hope was held out of enjoying the fertile plains of Italy, and quitting their rugged