Hannibal determined to pass the winter as quietly as he could, but he appears, according to the authorities,[50] to have indulged in a little masquerading, for the purpose of deceiving the Cisalpine Gauls, who more than once conspired to kill him. He would frequently change his dress; and he appears to have had a large assortment of wigs, in one or other of which he was accustomed to disguise himself. Sometimes he would appear in hair of the richest brown, and at other times it was of the reddest dye; so that the people were puzzled to understand how the same head could, on one day, appear covered with the luxuriant chestnut, and on another day, disfigured with an untidy bunch of carrots. On one occasion, when a conspiracy against him was ripe, he came to the council with a limping gait, and thus saved himself from a much more serious hobble.
[Illustration: Hannibal disguising himself.]
In the spring of the next year, the Consul, C. Flaminius, was sent to Ariminum with an army, and Hannibal started for Etruria. This expedition--if expedition is the proper term for an affair so extremely slow--lasted three days and three nights; the soldiers proceeding through marsh and morass, through thick and thin, to the end of their journey. The Spaniards went first, who picked their way, followed by the Gauls, who stuck in the mud, and were spurred on by the swords of the Numidians, who followed. All the horses were knocked up, and Hannibal, to whom all the glory of the march has been given, endured the least of the fatigue, for, while the common soldiers were wading through the mud, their chief was elevated on the back of the only surviving elephant.
The advantages of a high position were, in this instance, strikingly exemplified, for if Hannibal had moved in the humbler walks on this occasion, the probability is, that he could not have walked at all; but that, sinking in the marshes, he would have gone down--in a swamp--to posterity. He, himself, lost the use of one of his eyes, though, indeed, he exhibited throughout this disastrous affair an unusual amount of shortsightedness. After reaching Fæsulæ, now Fiesole, near Florence, he made for Rome, and Flaminius made after him as far as Cortona; but Hannibal, turning sharp round the corner of the Lake Trasimenus; ran unperceived up the heights, getting round to the rear of the Roman general, who thought the foe was still in front of him. While Flaminius was pressing forward, Hannibal and his forces fell upon him right and left, as well as behind, and a fog coming on at the time added to the perplexity of the Consul, by preventing him from seeing his danger. A fight in a fog is one of the most dismal pictures that can be described, if, indeed, it can be called a picture at all, when nothing can be seen, and the whole is a mere daub, caused by a fearful brush between two conflicting armies. Such was the fury of the fight, that it is said an earthquake, which happened at the time, was unperceived by the combatants; and, indeed, so shocking was the carnage, that a shock of nature might have sunk by its side into comparative insignificance. 15,000 Romans were slain, and those who are always ready to prophecy after an event, began to see clearly in certain omens that had happened some time before, the cause of all that had lately happened.