41.  In Spain, in the beginning of spring, Publius Scipio, having launched his ships, and summoned the auxiliary troops of his allies to Tarraco by an edict, ordered his fleet and transports to proceed thence to the mouth of the Iberus.  He also ordered his legions to quit their winter quarters, and meet at the same place; and then set out from Tarraco, with five thousand of the allies, to join the army.  On his arrival at the camp he considered it right to harangue his soldiers, particularly the old ones who had survived such dreadful disasters; and therefore, calling an assembly, he thus addressed them:  “Never was there a new commander before myself who could, with justice and good reason, give thanks to his soldiers before he had availed himself of their services.  Fortune laid me under obligations to you before I set eyes on my province or your camp; first, on account of the respect you have shown to my father and uncle, both in their lifetime and since their death; and secondly, because by your valour you have recovered and preserved entire, for the Roman people, and me their successor, the possession of the province which had been lost in consequence of so dreadful a calamity.  But since, now, by the favour of the gods, our purpose and endeavour is not that we may remain in Spain ourselves, but that the Carthaginians may not; and not to stand on the bank of the Iberus, and hinder the enemy from crossing that river, but cross it first ourselves, and carry the war to the other side, I fear lest to some among you the enterprise should appear too important and daring, considering your late misfortunes, which are fresh in your recollection, and my years.  There is no person from whose mind the memory of the defeats sustained in Spain could be obliterated with more difficulty than from mine; inasmuch as there my father and uncle were both slain within the space of thirty days, so that one death after another was accumulated on my family.  But as the orphanhood and desolation of my own family depresses my mind, so both the good fortune and valour of our nation forbid me to despair of the safety of the state.  It has happened to us by a kind of fatality, that in all important wars we have been victorious, after having been defeated.  I pass over those wars of ancient date with Porsena, the Gauls, and Samnites.  I will begin with the Punic wars.  How many fleets, generals, and armies were lost in the former war?  Why should I mention what has occurred in this present war?  I have either been myself present at all the defeats sustained, or have felt more than any other those from which I was absent.  What else are the Trebia, the Trasimenus, and Cannae, but monuments of Roman armies and consuls slain?  Add to these the defection of Italy, of the greater part of Sicily and Sardinia, and the last terror and panic, the Carthaginian camp pitched between the Anio and the walls of Rome, and the victorious Hannibal seen almost in our gates.  Amid this general