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Nero also resumed his former
position in observation of the Carthaginian army.
[Footnote 63: The annalists whom Livy copied spoke of Nero's gaining
repeated victories over Hannibal, and killing and taking his men by tens
of thousands. The falsehood of all this is self-evident. If Nero could
thus always beat Hannibal, the Romans would not have been in such an
agony of dread about Hasdrubal as all writers describe. Indeed, we have
the express testimony of Polybius that the statements which we read in
Livy of Marcellus, Nero, and others gaining victories over Hannibal in
Italy must be all fabrications of Roman vanity. Polybius states that
Hannibal was never defeated before the battle of Zama; and in another
passage he mentions that after the defeats which Hannibal inflicted on
the Romans in the early years of the war, they no longer dared face his
army in a pitched battle on a fair field, and yet they resolutely
maintained the war. He rightly explains this by referring to the
superiority of Hannibal's cavalry, the arm which gained him all his
victories.


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