Carthaginians answered that they would follow the choice of the Romans; and when these cried out “war,” a loud shout of joy was raised. One would now have thought that the Romans had already made great preparations; yet this was not the case. They had at that time only a small fleet, which moreover we afterwards hear of but seldom, and even then, little is said about it. The consuls, since the Ides of March, were P. Cornelius Scipio and Ti. Sempronius Longus. The Romans had the intention of sending the consul Scipio with two legions and ten thousand allies to Spain, and Sempronius with the same number of troops to Africa. The Carthaginians had no fleet of any importance; this was the first fault committed by them in this war. It may be that the rich who were in the government made niggardly retrenchments, that they might cut down the expenses of the war as much as possible. The plan of the Romans was not badly devised; only it is plain that they were quite mistaken in their estimate of their antagonist. Had Scipio arrived in Spain, before Hannibal had passed the Ebro, his army would have been driven by Hannibal into the sea, or annihilated within the first weeks, and the invasion of Italy would have become far more easy. And yet, if Hannibal had not carried on the war with such very great speed, the season of the year might have come on, in which he could no longer have crossed the Alps. The Romans show themselves unskilful at the beginning of every great war; their troops were not thoroughly trained, they had no standing army like Hannibal, nor did it even occur to them that they ought to place the very best of their generals in command. Hannibal took the wisest precautions: he sent the chief men of the conquered tribes over to Carthage, or kept them with him; and he despatched besides some picked Spanish troops for the defence of Africa, and a body of Libyans trained by himself, who were to garrison Carthage. Into Spain, on the other hand, he drew over a great many Libyans.