Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 30
Frank Gardener Moore, Professor Emeritus in Columbia University, Ed.

28. Meanwhile hope and anxiety alike were increasing from day to day, and men could not quite make up their minds whether it was a fit subject for rejoicing that Hannibal, retiring from Italy after sixteen years, had left the Roman people free to take possession¹ of it, and not rather a ground for apprehension that he had crossed over to Africa with his army intact. [2] The place doubtless had been changed, they thought, not the danger. Foretelling that mighty conflict Quintus Fabius, recently deceased, had often predicted, not without reason, that in his own land Hannibal would be a more terrible enemy than in a foreign country. [3] And Scipio would have to deal neither with Syphax, king of a land of untrained barbarians, for whom Statorius,² who was little more than a sutler, commonly commanded his armies, nor with the father-in-law of Syphax, Hasdrubal, a general very swift in flight, nor with irregular armies suddenly raised from a half-armed mob of rustics. [4] Rather [p. 467]would he have to do with Hannibal, who had been³ born, one might almost say, at the headquarters of his father, the bravest of generals, had been reared and brought up in the midst of arms;⁴ [5] who even in boyhood was a soldier, in earliest manhood a general; who, ageing⁵ as a victor, had filled the Spanish and Gallic lands and Italy from the Alps to the Straits with the evidence of his mighty deeds. He was in command of an army whose campaigns equalled his own in number; was toughened by enduring such hardships as one could scarcely believe human beings had endured; had been spattered with Roman blood a thousand times and carried the spoils, not of soldiers only but also of generals. [6] Many men who would encounter Scipio in battle had with their own hands slain Roman praetors, generals-in-command, consuls; had been decorated with crowns for bravery in scaling city-walls and camp defences;⁶ had wandered through captured camps, captured cities of the Romans. [7] All the magistrates of the Roman people did not at that time have so many fasces as Hannibal was able to have borne before him, having captured them from fallen generals.⁷

[8] By brooding over such terrifying thoughts men were adding to their own anxieties and fears, for another reason too: whereas year after year it had been their habit to carry on a war before their eyes in one part and then in another of Italy, with hope deferred and looking to no immediate end of the conflict, all men's interest [9??] was now intensified by Scipio and Hannibal, as it were, pitted against each [p. 469]other for the final combat. [10] Even in the case of those⁸ who had great confidence in Scipio and high hope of victory, the more their minds were bent upon immediate victory the more intense were their anxieties. [11] Not unlike were the feelings of the Carthaginians, who at one moment, when they thought of Hannibal and the greatness of his achievements, regretted having sued for peace, at another moment, on reflecting that they had been twice defeated in battle,⁹