QUOTE : Hannibal seems to have set out from Cartagena about mid-June in 218 B.C. and to have been five months between Cartagena and the plains of the Po. It was, therefore, mid-October at the earliest when he halted at the watershed above Italy and gazed southward. Undoubtedly he had not intended to cross the Alps so late, having hoped, perhaps, to make a start in May. He had been delayed, as has been suggested, by the late arrival of many of his troops from their winter quarters, and delayed again, as we know, by unexpected heavy fighting throughout northern Spain. It would seem, in fact, that his arrival at this point was even later than October, for the setting of the Pleiades would have been visible in the latitude in which he stood during the first fortnight in November in the year 218 B.C.