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Updated: June 16, 2025
Few battles confer more honour on the Roman soldier than this on the Trebia, and few at the same time furnish graver impeachment of the general in command; although the candid judge will not forget that a commandership in chief expiring on a definite day was an unmilitary institution, and that figs cannot be reaped from thistles. The victory came to be costly even to the victors.
He next himself master of Lavinium, and then took in succession Corbio, Vitellia, Trebia, Labici, and Pedum.
One would suppose the Africans were for the most part Romans, they were so equipped with arms captured at the Trebia, and for the greater part at the Trasimenus. The shields of the Gauls and Spaniards were of the same shape; their swords unequal and dissimilar. The Gauls had very long ones, without points.
No sooner had the valiant consul, Cornelius Scipio, been defeated in a cavalry battle on the Ticinus, a northern branch of the Po , and, severely wounded, retreated to Placentia, and his rash colleague, Sempronius, been defeated with great loss in a second battle on the Trebia, than the Gauls joined Hannibal, and reinforced him with sixty thousand troops inured to war.
The two armies were now united on the Trebia, and opinion was among the officers and troops, as between the consuls, widely divided as to the best course to be pursued. Hannibal's spies among the natives kept him acquainted with what was going on in the Roman camp, and he determined to provoke the Romans to battle.
Crossing the Trebia partly by ford and partly by swimming, the Carthaginian horse rode up to the palisade surrounding the Roman camp, where, with insulting shouts and the hurling of their javelins, they aroused the Roman soldiers from their slumber.
Not only were the allies to be prevented from believing that Rome was disposed to enter into negotiations, but even the meanest citizen was to be made to understand that for him as for all there was no peace, and that safety lay only in victory. Polybius's account of the battle on the Trebia is quite clear.
The cavalry of both armies joined battle, Hannibal's Numidian horse proved their superiority, and Scipio fell back beyond the Po. The Carthaginians crossed the river, and the first great battle of the campaign was fought in the plain of the Trebia. Placing Mago in ambush with 2,000 men, Hannibal enticed the Romans across the stream.
Flushed with wine, he was boasting of his slain. "Four at Trebia," he cried out, "seven at Trasimenus, eighteen at Cannae but all men. It is better to slay the wolves' whelps, if only to teach women that it is no longer wise to bring forth Romans. I I who speak have already killed eleven boys ah! but you must wait till we enter Rome. Then will be the day when they shall build new cities in Hades!"
Many were drowned in trying to swim the Trebia, and only the legion which had remained to guard the camp, the broken remains of the cavalry, and the body which had escaped from Piacenza remained of the fifty thousand men whom Sempronius commanded. The exultation of the victors was unbounded. The hitherto invincible legions of Rome had been crushed. The way to Rome was clear before them.
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