Hannibal Barca
At the frozen Alpine summit he showed his broken army Italy below — then built a road off the mountain.
The episode
Nine days up into the Alps in 218 BC, with snow already gathering on the summit, Hannibal's army hit its breaking point. The column had been mauled by mountain tribes in the gorges below, and Polybius records the men were in bad spirits from all they had suffered and all they expected to suffer. Hannibal called an assembly — and pointed down. From the pass he showed them Italy spread below like a city beneath its citadel: the plain of the Po, the lands of allied Gauls, the direction of Rome itself. Spirits partly restored, the army descended — until a landslide erased the path. Hannibal did not turn back: his men built a new road along the cliff, taking the horses across in a day and the elephants in three.
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