Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 21
Rev. Canon Roberts, Ed.

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"If, soldiers, I were leading into battle the army which I had with me in Gaul, there would have been no need for me to address you. [2] For what encouragement would those cavalry need who had won such a brilliant victory over the enemy's cavalry at the Rhone or those legions of infantry with whom I pursued this same enemy, who by his running away and shirking an engagement acknowledged that I was his conqueror? [3] That army, raised for service in Spain, is campaigning under my brother, Cn. Scipio, who is acting as my deputy in the country which the senate and people of Rome have assigned to it. [4] In order, therefore, that you might have a consul to lead you against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, I have volunteered to command in this battle, and as I am new to you and you to me I must say a few words to you. "Now as to the character of the enemy and the kind of warfare which awaits you. [5] You have to fight, soldiers, with the men whom you defeated in the former war by land and sea, from whom you have exacted a war indemnity for the last twenty years, and from whom you wrested Sicily and Sardinia as the prizes of war. You, therefore, will go into this battle with the exultation of victors, they with the despondency of the vanquished. [6] They are not going to fight now because they are impelled by courage but through sheer necessity; unless indeed you suppose that, after shirking a contest when their army was at its full strength, they have gained more confidence now that they have lost two-thirds of their infantry and [7??] cavalry in their passage over the Alps, now that those who survive are fewer than those who have perished. [8] "'Yes,' it may be said, 'they are few in number, but they are strong in courage and physique, and possess a power of endurance and vigour in attack which very few can withstand.' [9] No, they are only semblances or rather ghosts of men, worn out with starvation, cold, filth, and squalor, bruised and enfeebled amongst the rocks and precipices, and, what is more, their limbs are frostbitten, their thews and sinews cramped with cold, their frames shrunk and shrivelled with frost, their weapons battered and shivered, their horses lame and out of condition. [10] This is the cavalry, this the infantry with whom you are going to fight; you will not have an enemy but only the last vestiges of an enemy to meet. My only fear is that when you have fought it will appear to be the Alps that have conquered Hannibal. [11] But perhaps it was right that it should be so, and that the gods, without any human aid, should begin and all but finish this war with a people and their general who have broken treaties, and that to us, who next to the gods have been sinned against, it should be left to complete what they began.