^^^ ^^^^ ^'^1>? ^_^<; noXv^io<; of Strabo. Strabo does not introduce this observation as appropriate to the matter that he is speaking of in the seventh book, namely, the length of the Egnatian way : it would equally have suited any otlier assertion of milliary distance in any part of his works ; nothing shows why it has come in here. Macedonia may have been the first conquered state in which the Eoman mile was employed, and indicated by columns ; and, if any such blunder as a Eoman stade had occurred, which does not appear, Polybius was a likely man to notice it. But a greater improbability was never suggested than VOL. I. E 60 Authority of FohjUus. [part ii. that he himself made the mHe 200 Greek feet longer than the rest of the world ; he had the best opportunity of under- standing both Greek and Eoman weights and measures ; and, if such a man, one so much referred to by those who came after him, had so estimated a measure which he has to men- tion in almost every page that he writes, this one oblique reference to it in Strabo's seventh book would not be the only clue. If the fact were true, Strabo would have disclosed the notion in a less questionable manner. But the notion is supported by nothing, either in Strabo or any other author : it is contradicted by Livy when he translates the stades of Polybius into miles, as in the case of Hanno's march up the Ehone, 200 st. = 25 m. p. ; it is contradicted by Polybius himself. When he says in a parenthesis, iii. 39, that the Komans marked their distances along the Iberian coast at intervals of eight stadia, do we not see that the intervals were Eoman miles ? M. Gossellin does not admit this notion of Polybius, though reported by himself, but twists it into another shape by the aid of Strabo. Noticing the Polybian intervals of 8 stadia, between ''les pierres milliaires que mesuroient et ornoient les voies Eomaines," he had said reasonably, " D'apr^s ce passage " il paroitroit que Polybe auroit reconnu que le mille Eomain " valoit huit stades juste." — Eecherches, ii. p, 6. But in the next page he turns away from those appearances, and sub- mitting himself to "le t^moignage positif d'un auteur aussi grave que Strabon," clings to the 8^ with a permanent devo- tion. All his calculations are made on that footing. Dr. Ukert, in his elaborate disquisition on ancient measures of length, which occupies twentyrsix pages in the second part of his first volume published in 1816, and in which he com_ bats M. Gossellin's doctrines on the stade, notices the addition of two plethra to eight stadia which Strabo is said to impute to Polybius : and then says, " In the writings of Polybius CHAP. IV.] His Stade and Distances. 51 " which remain to us, we find him to report the relation of " the stade to the mile, the same as others." However, in the volume published in 1832, p. 578, this learned man, taking part in the Hannibal controversy, condemns the passage in Polybius as spurious, and asserts him to reckon 8^ stadia to the mile. He might as well have saved his consistency. It will appear in a future chapter (Part iii. ch. 3), that he shifted into error on this point without any adequate temptation. He is treating " Koman measurements in Gaul and Spain." . And now a few words on the distances of Polybius, No one will claim for his measurements that they are minutely accurate : for they are commonly expressed in round hundreds of stades ; and it would be idle to suppose that the length of each space had amounted to a precise multiple of an hundred. Others wrote in the same way. Strabo cites the opinions of his predecessors in hundreds of stades : and in the Eoman Itineraries every space is given in entire miles, the mile being 5,000 Poman feet : no fractions are ever mentioned. But, while precision is disclaimed, reasonable accuracy is fairly to be supposed in Polybius. The rudeness of science made calculations of space across the ocean a matter of much difficulty: there was not the same difficulty in a measure- ment from Kome to Milan, or from Mmes to Yalence. In the spaces that we must deal with, we have to trust to Poly- bius alone : they had not been registered from prior investiga- tion : he is responsible ; and the truthful intention, which is conceded to him by all, gives a presumption of accuracy where error is not apparent. The importance of his distances is peculiar, for the usefulness of his evidence depends upon them. The struggle, as we proceed from point to point, is to identify his termini : when he describes a portion of the line of march from an ascertained point, the disputation is, whether it should end at this or that place ; accordingly, the length which he gives to the interval is a criterion towards de- e2 gi Authority of PolyUus. [PAUT ii. termining what that place was, and the trustworthiness of such a narrator becomes more than usually important, as there are not the conclusive means of checking his accuracy. A country travelled, is ordinarily shown by naming in succession the places through which a traveller has passed. Such is not the index to Hannibal's route through Gaul and the Alps : we find our way by description of regions traversed, with allegation of time and space. In telling the story of the invasion, there is a point in the progress where Polybius lays aside 'the usual notices, the names of places and peoples. While the march was yet in Spain, the names of nations who resisted the Carthaginians have been freely told : Hannibal subdued in succession the Ilergetes, the Bargusii, the ^renosii, the AndrosinL The country spoken of had long been the seat of war, and, in naming the nations, he gave an intelligible clothing to his ideas : all readers might know the points of distance from Carthagena to the Ebro, and from the Ebro to Emporium, But from the Pyrenees to the plain of Italy he was employed on a line of movement which, when he wrote, was untrodden by the armies of Eome from one extremity to the other. Scipio had advanced a little way from the eastern mouth of the Ehone, and visited the site of the Carthaginian encampment ; but he returned to his ships, not having trodden one stadium of Hannibal's route. Polybius felt the risk of error which there would be in attempting here the usual memorials of a track ; and sought a safer method of instruction. In that whole course, from the Pyrenees to the plain of Italy, we do not find one name of place : to the time when the invaders are actually descend- ing into the plain, one people only has been named, and one river besides the Ehone. Of the march from the Pyrenees to the Ehone it was enough to say, that they performed it, having the sea on their right hand ; and the point where they first touched the Ehone, is to be perceived only by its distance CHAP. IV.] His Stade and Distances. 53 from natural objects, the sea below it, and a confluent river, the Is^re, above it. In the onward march along the Ehone from that confluence to and through the Alps, we are helped by no names save that of the people called AUobroges : no further name assists us to understand the tale of events, till we come to the Insubres of the plain : the instruction is by local character, with circumstances of opposition and diffi- culty, and allotment of time and space to operations per- formed. The incidents of each day are thus offered to our attention ; and, by such notification of things without names, the historian hoped to show the course of the invasion in a way that should be recognised in after times. A plain assurance of this is given in the author's own words. When Hannibal is on the eve of forcing the passes of the Pyrenees, (iii. 36,) Polybius writes as follows — " But " that my narrative carrying you through unknown countries " may not be altogether obscure, I must state from whence " Hannibal set out, what and how great regions he traversed, " and into what parts of Italy he arrived. I am not going to " set forth the proper names of districts, and rivers, and cities ; " which some writers do, supposing this part of the business " to be all-suflicient for making things intelligible and clear. " I allow that the citation of names in known countries very " greatly contributes to cause a recognition of the objects : " but in countries utterly unknown, a detail of names has " but the effect of words that give sound without sense : for " so long as the mind has nothing to lay hold of, and cannot " apply the words to any known ideas, the narrative is with- " out order and without point. Wherefore a way is to be " shown by which, though speaking of unknown things, it is *' practicable to bring one's hearers in some measure to con- " ceptions that have truth and knowledge. The first and " main thing to know, and which all men may know, is the " division and arrangement of the firmament which surrounds 54 Authority of Folyhius.^ [PAET II. " us ; by the perception of which all of us, that is all in " whom there is usefulness, comprehend East, West, South, " and North. Next is that knowledge by which, apportioning " the several regions of the earth according to those distinc- « tions, and always in our minds applying what we hear to " those distinctions, we come to have clear and familiar *' notions about places unknown to us, and unseen."' Explanations follow touching the great divisions of the earth, and the greater or less acquaintance which had been arrived at with the several parts of the world : the discussion ends thus— "Eor, as we are used, for the purpose of seeing, " to bend our faces towards an object pointed out by the " finger ; so must we, for the purpose of understanding, make " the effort to bend our thoughts to places that are from time " to time pointed out by the story told." The observations from which these extracts are given, are jnade in peculiar application to that small portion of the earth's surface which is the theatre of this controversy. The tale, which for good reasons is weak in names, assumes an increased strength in its other features : for these I claim attention, because they are so characterized as important by the special announcement of this admirable historian, THE ALPS OF HANNIBAL. PAET IH. POLYBIUS INTERPRETED. PASSAGE OF THE RHONE. CHAPTER I. Introduction. Division of the March. Three points to he fixed : the Passage of the Rhone ; the beginning of Alps ; the exit into the Plain. Sagunttjm fell during the winter of 219 B.C. Thereupon the Romans sent an embassy to Carthage, demanding the surrender of Hannibal and other chiefs, with war as the alter- native. We may collect from Polybius, that the Consul had completed his successes in lUyria and returned to Rome before the siege of Saguntum was brought to a conclusion. The Romans had despatched ^milius with his army to Illyria at the opening of the season ; and Hannibal marched from Carthagena against Saguntum about the same time. His designs were fully understood by the Romans ; but it does not appear that they knew his operations to have been com- menced when the lUyrian expedition was sent out. We read, c. 20, that -^milius returned and entered Rome in triumph on the close of the summer, Xrjyovcrrjfi rj^r] t^9 6epeLa se deviser en plusieurs bras " tortueux, entrelac^s de la mani^re la plus bizarre. On y " remarque huit iles principales indiquees dans les anciennes " cartes par les noms de I'Oiselet, le Chateau de Lers, le " Queironette, Piboulette, la Berre, Cadanet, I'Agace et " Crompa. Le fleuve egar^ dans ce labyrinthe d'iles ne put " etre traverse ni au-dessus du territoire de Montfaucon, ni " au-dessous de Eoquemaure : on ne le trouve reuni en un " seul courant d'une etendue suffisante, qu'entre ces deux " villages. La, il coule tout entier dans un lit de 245 ^250 " toises de largeur sur un longueur de 1800 toises. C'est done *' aux environs de Montfaucon que furent lances les bateaux " et les radeaux dont Annibal fit usage : entrain^s par le " courant, ils durent aborder 800 ou 900 toises plus bas sur '* la rive opposee." CHAPTEE III. Theory of Tarascon. Alignment of Dr. JJhert. Distance from the Sea. Distance from the Island. Roman ineasurements in Gaul and Spain. Roads in Gaul. Policy of Hannibal. Vessels tcsed in the Crossing. March of Scijpio. As Tarascon on the left bank still bears its ancient name, while Ugernum on the right bank has become Beaucaire, let the former place entitle this theory. I know only of three VOL. I. F QQ J^olylius interp-eted. [part ill. who subscribe to it : tlie anonymous of Cambridge, 1830 ; Dr. Ukei-t ; and Mr. Heniy Long. The first draws the red line of march in his map through Tarascon ; and gives a reason, which he probably thinks to be enough. In p. 35, he says, " From Nimes the Eoman road branched off in two " directions, one to Aries, the other to Tarascon : and by one '* of these, according to Polybius, the Carthaginian continued " his march to the Rhone." Again, p. 45, " Polybius describes *•' Hannibal as arriving by a Roman road at the banks of the ** Rhone." Many, besides this critic, have written to the same effect : but they have writen in error : Polybius never said so : he had no more experience of Roman roads in Languedoc than Hannibal himself : there were none in his day. The learned Ukert is exempt from that delusion : but, as he has laboured much in favour of Tarascon, he claims our serious attention. On the distance of Tarascon from the Sea. This much commended geographer pronounces the place of crossing thus : — " When Polybius says that Hannibal crossed " KUTCL Tr}v aifKrjv pvatv, this was certainly north of the island, " which lies opposite to Beaucaire : and Hanno might choose " a place north of Aramon." He then takes great pains, but in a mysterious manner, to induce his readers to the notion, that this part just above Beaucaire and Tarascon was, in Hannibal's time, at such a distance from the sea, as to amount to " nearly four days' journey," which he represents as import- ing a distance of 600 stadia for an army, and more for a traveller. Avoiding all direct assertion of the distance of Tarascon from any other point. Dr. Ukert first contrives a proof that the distance from the Durance to the mouth of the Rhone is from 700 to 800 stadia : and then he pronounces that Tarascon, CHAP. III.] Tarascon Theory. Uhert. 67 being lower down, might be about four days' journey from the mouth. His proof of the 700 or 800 is by taking the length of the Ehone from Lyons to the mouth, and deducting the distance from Lyons to the Durance. He exhibits the difficulty, and prepares us for the process thus : — " We must not think here of exact measurements. A " map drawn by Polybius w^ould no doubt give us quite a '' different picture of the country from that which our ow^n " maps give ; especially as the whole nature of the country " shows us, that south of the Druentia there was formerly " nmch more water than at present : and, as the mouths of " the Ehone have experienced many changes, w^e cannot " declare with certainty where the Eoman Consul landed, " nor what road it was necessary to take at that time, which *' was counted equal to a four days' journey. Our maps alone " cannot enable us to arrive at any conclusion. " Let us therefore seek for information among the ancients. " Strabo says, lib. iv. p. 193 : — " airo Aovyhovvov fJiixpi' tov " ^7]Kovdva '^(iXloiv crraBlcov eorriv eXarrov he rj hiirXdaiov tov- " TOV, TO diro Twv elarjSoXwv rod 'VoSdvov ///ep^^/ot AovySovvov.^ " If we attend to this, and at the same time compare with " it some other notices from Strabo, lib. iv. p. 185-6 : from " the Druentia to the Ishve, 700 stadia — to Vienne 320 — to " Lugdunum 200 = 1220 stadia, we find that the distance " from the mouths of the Ehone to the Druentia, is from 700 " to 800 stadia ; and the place accepted by us, as that where " the Ehone was crossed, I'olybius might justly call about " four days' journey from the sea." — Ukert's Geogr. ii. 2d part, 681, 2, 3. * Translated. It is 1000 stadia from Lyons to the Seine : and less than the double of that from the mouths of the Rhone to Lyons. N.B. Strabo is speaking of the carriage of goods from the Mediterranean to the British Channel up the Saone and across to the TtXeofievov of the Seine. F 2 QQ Polyhms interpreted. [part ill. Tlie calculation is this :— From Lyons to the Ehone's mouth is less than 2,000 stadia ; from Lyons to the Durance is 1,220 stadia. Take 1,220 from less than 2,000 : and less than 780 remains for the length of the Ehone from the Durance to the mouth. Now the subject which Dr. Ukert takes in hand is a certain distance down the Ehone to the mouth ; i.e. from the confluence of the Durance. He quotes Strabo for the total length of the Ehone from a higher point of tlie river, Lyons. Then, by way of showing the length below the confluence, he professes to deduct the length above the confluence from the total. But he does not do this : the length which he deducts is not a part of the total from which he deducts it : it is for the most part not along the Ehone. The 1,220 stadia which figure in his demonstration are borrowed from a line of dis- tances drawn across country from Marseille through Cavaillon; and in which line the subject of his proof, Tarascon, would be looked for in vain. Tliis much-commended geographer has not looked atten- tively at his materials. He might have applied them for showing what he aims at. In the very passages from which he derives three distances of Strabo, there is something more to the purpose than " less than the double of a thousand." When Dr. Ukert's argument seems to be carrying the reader along the Ehone to the sea, he is in fact travelling in a cross-country road to Marseille ; and, as he did stray into that line, he might have profited by it. Strabo, besides reporting the three distances which Dr. Ukert has extracted as making 1,220 from Lyons to the Durance (which they do to Cavaillon on the Durance), completes that line to the sea at Marseille ; making the whole 1,720 from Lyons. Before Strabo gives that 1,220 stadia, which he reckons from Cavaillon to Lyons, he gives 500 stadia from Marseille to Cavaillon. The whole matter upon these distances is as CHAP. III.] Tarascon Theory. Ukert 69 follows : — " If you start from Marseille, and proceed to the " country between the Alps and the Ehone, the Salyes inhabit " it as far as the river Durance, for 500 stadia *' And if you cross the ferry to Cavaillon, all " belongs to the Cavari, as far as the junction of " the Is^re with the Ehone : — "To that point from the Durance is a dis- " tance of 700 „ Afterwards we read — " From the Is^re to Vienne ....... 320 „ " From Vienne to Lyons by land 200 „ By water a little more. 1,720 stadia. Perhaps Dr. Ukert may apprehend the confluence of the Rhone and the Durance to be here spoken of. But it is not so : that confluence is never spoken of ; and the idea of it is excluded by the traveller being instructed to cross by the ferry at Cavaillon. "Whatever may be the excuse, this matter of Strabo throws more light on the distance from Lyons to the Ehone's mouth than " less than the double of a thousand." He reports 1,720 stadia from Lyons to Marseille, and therefore must have apprehended less than 1,720 to the mouth of the Ehone ; for we know that he attributed to Marseille a more southern latitude. He calls the Galatic gulph, into which the Ehone is discharged (p. 122), /coXtto? /lera^v Macraa\ia<; Koi Nap/9ft)z^o9 : and he states as a fact, (p. 115), that Marseille lies more south, voo-tayrepa, than the recess of the gulph. Thus, when Dr. Ukert was studying the length of the Ehone from Lyons to the sea, he had before him something better worth attending to than the uncertain numeral in p. 193 : he would see not only that Strabo considered the line of Ehone below Lyons to be "less than 2,000 stadia," but that he onsidered it less than 1,720 stadia. 70 PohjUus interjpreted. [part hi. Let us then apply this in aid of Dr. Ukert's estimate of Khone below Durance. Let us allow the total below Lyons to be the full 1,720, though it is not so much. How shall we divide this into two parts, above and below the Durance? Strabo does not help us to do this : and, as Dr. Ukert wishes information to be sought from the ancients, let us refer to the Eoman Itineraries. And first the length above the Durance : the nearest point to the confluence which the Itineraries give is Avignon ; and we make a furtlier concession, if -we divide tlie two parts at that point, instead of the confluence which is below it. These registers exhibit from Lyons to Avignon, 162 m. = 1,296 stadia. Take this 1,296 from 1,720, and there remains 424 for the residue to the mouth. The only remain- ing question is, — where in this length of 424 do we find Tarascon ? The place is mentioned in no Itinerary ; and we must be content with the modern Livre de Poste, which gives from Avignon to Tarascon, 23,000 metres = 124 stadia. When this is taken from the 424, 300 stadia, or 37 J miles, remain as the distance of Tarascon from the mouth of the Ehone : such is, in truth, the maximum distance of Dr. Ukert's hid^aaL^ from the sea, if he w^ill interpret Strabo justly : rather a short distance to represent the o-'x^eSov ijfjiepcov reTrdpcov oBov of Polybius. It is to be observed that Dr. Ukert, in recommending his longer distance for four days' work, suggests the embarrassment of water ; and that we know not Scipio's landing-place ; nor the changes since made in the mouths of the Ehone. Now we may suppose, that the Eoman general would not have passed on from the friendly city of Marseille, and disembarked his army nearer to the river's mouth, if he had been thereby involved in greater difficulty of proceeding. He did not land as an adventurer in an unreported region : his native ally added a force to his force, and would aid in fixing the spot for ji first encampmont, having in view the obstruction of the %• CHAP. III.] Tarascon Theory. UJcert. 71 Carthaginian expedition. If it is meant to be insinuated that the sea has gained on the land, and so to favour the supposition that Tarascon was of old farther from the Ehone's mouth than now, I apprehend the contrary to be the fact. De Luc cites the testimony of M. Darluc from his Histoire naturelle de la Provence, 1782, p. 262. '* La Camargue est " un grand terrain qui forme, par sa position, un triangle " Equilateral, ayant sept lieues de longueur de chaque cotE. " Cette lie separe les deux bras du Ehone qui se divisent au- " dessous d' Aries. Son enceinte etait moins considerable " autrefois. Les atterrissemens successifs que le Ehone a " formes a son embouchure, Font aggrandie. La tour de St. " Louis, qui fut elevde pres des bords de la mer en 1630, en " est eloignee aujourd'hui d'une lieue." On these facts we may believe that, if the Tarascon of 218 B. c. differed from the Tarascon of to-day, it was in being nearer to, not further from, the sea than now. In other parts of the Mediterranean the land has advanced near the mouths of rivers. I believe this is the case, at the mouths of the Po, at the mouth of the Tiber, at the mouth of the Arno. In Languedoc, not far from the scenes we are speaking of, there is the little town of Aigues-mortes (equse mortua?) now some miles from the sea, formerly close upon the shore. To his ill-advised commentary Dr. Ukert adds this. " Hanno may have crossed above Aramon." This would not be well said, even if the notion on Tarascon had been a wise one. Polybius relates that the crossing of Hanno was 25 miles above that of Hannibal. Aramon is not ten above Tarascon. On the distance of Tarascon from the Island. Dr. Ukert acquiesces in the text so far as to say this, p. 585 : — " After four days' march in succession from the 72 PolyUus interpreted. [part hi. place of crossing, Hannibal arrives at the Island." Presently, however, he appears dissentient, by starting a doubt on the Island itself. He says, "Let us look back and ask where the " Island is situated. Polybius tells us to look for it at a " distance of 600 stadia from the place of crossing the " river." So far the writer seems to agree with all other critics, that Polybius intends the length of the Phone between the Island and the Btd^aaL<; as 600 stadia. But lie proceeds to ascertain whether this is a correct measurement. There are two modes of reckoning the space : — 1. From the Island down to the Bidfiaa-i<;. 2. From the Bid^aLK6/ijL€vo<;, as well as ovai, Then we have the narra- tive of Hannibal's interference with the contending parties, and the refitting of his army. We then read that, having in ten days marched 800 stadia irapa rov Trora/jLov, he began the ascent. Here it is that M. Letronne interprets Trora/nov the Is^re, because it was " the river last named." C'est de I'lsere qu'il a parle en dernier lieu ! * iii. 49, 6. This is the only place where Polybius names the Is^re. CHAP. II.] First Alps. Mmit du Ghat. 119 To know what river is intended, we have to regard that which is the subject of the story that we are reading,* not that whose name has last occurred in the text. The historian, in describing country, might pause to enumerate all tributary streams which flow into the Rhone below Geneva : when his narrative is resumed, " the river " will not intend the last of that catalogue. This is but common sense ; and we need not go far for a confirmation of it. Let us try M. Letronne by his own test of " the river last-named." Polybius says, c. 49, that in three days after Hannibal had marched forward, Scipio came in search of him to the passage of the river — eVl t^v tov TTOTafiov Btdffaaiv; and probably, when M. Letronne read the history, he believed this iroraiiov to be the Rhone : but, if he had looked back for the river last named, and applied his own rule, he would have found that Scipio was looking for Hannibal on the Po. Indeed that principle would transfer much of these operations to the other side of the Alps : for again, if you will read Hannibal's address to his army after crossing the river, and interpret the word irorafiov by " le nom " qui prdcMe imm^diatement," you will perceive that he con- gratulated them on their successful passage of the Po. As for the Is^re in the instance before us, M. Letronne does not even fulfil the philosophy of his own precept : for when, to under- stand TTorafiov, he retreats through the text in search of a river, the first he stumbles upon is in truth neither Rhodanus nor Isaras : he first encounters Ta<; twv Trorafiwv pvaet^i, the streams which confine the Egyptian delta. Thus it would better accord with the spirit of his doctrine, to maintain that Hannibal marched to the Alps up the Nile. There is another test, to which the discovery of M. Letronne must be subjected ; the illustration of an author by himself. This also he encountered boldly. Polybius in * See note in Appendix. 120 • Polybius interpreted. [part ly. c. 39, dividing the whole march into five sections, mentioned this section, " from the passage oj the Ehone to the beginning or ascent of Alps," as being 1,400 stadia irap' avrov rov TTorafiov: and one woiild say, that the term irapa rov TTorafjiov, as used in the narrative of this same progress, must import the same river which was described in that section. See how the expression is used. Statement of this section of the march in c. 39. 'Atto ^e T^9 hLapd(T€(id<; rov ^Vohavov 7ropevofiivoiiKov TovTo) aW' €7r' evBeia^ Xiycov. — ii. 107. Again, reporting Polybius's estimate of the circumference of the Peloponnesus, he says, viii. 335, that he reckoned it fir) fcaraKoXTrl^ovrt, for one not coasting the gulphs or inlets. These words amply vindicate the Polybian distance from the Is^re to the Alps, as avoiding the aKoXcoifia to Lyons. Our adversaries measure the zigzag line of the river, and say that 800 stadia is too short : we measure the line of march, and are satisfied. Hannibal's guides had the sense to save time and distance by not adhering to the banks of that devious stream : he kept away from it till it offered itself again : and the history rightly shows his course wapa toy irorafjuov, prescribing it /jlt) KaTaKoXiri^jovri, 4. Through a country where Cavalry could act. The correspondence of Northern Dauphine with the country here described by Polybius cannot be disputed : it is an open country of undulating plain ; and this character is essentially interwoven with the historical explanation of events. To a certain point the hostile bodies, which were apprehended by the Carthaginians as threatening their advance, were deterred from attack by two things ; the native auxiliary force, and the Carthaginian cavalry, that arm of war in which Hannibal was always superior to his enemies. When is this terror said to operate ? ' so long as they were in the plain country — ew? iv ToU eTrnrkhoL'^ Tjo-av, When did this terror cease? when the ally turned homewards, and the army moved into the difficult ground for the assault of the Alps : cavalry, the object of fear in an open country, loses all advantage in a mountain pass. CHAP. II.] First Al2^s. Mont dii Chat 127 In Polybius's account of this part of the route, every term has its value and effect : and in this requisite of a country fit for the operations of cavalry in protecting the advance of the army, there is great value and effect ; it is fulfilled by the march which I am now delineating : whether it belongs to any of the routes south of Isk'e, we may hereafter inquire. Though I consider our adversaries to fail in providing this requisite, they acknowledge its importance : and we find the mos't distinguished man among them, Letronne, on reaching a point deep in the mountains, which, in distance, suits the track that he adopts, rashly to exclaim, " j usque-la Tarm^e " s'^toit trouv^e en plaine !" M. Larauza imputes to our route the want of the required plain, because of the rocks which occur on the shore of the Khone in a part below Vienne, " depuis les environs de Gisors jusque vers St. Vallier." But, if the country just there is not quite plain, of which I know nothing, our cavalry has less occasion for it short of Vienne. That place was probably the head-quarters of the ally, when he refitted the Carthaginian force after the success which Hannibal procured for him : from that place to the Alps the apprehension of Allobrogian assault operated, and the services of the cavalry became most important. In all theories of a progress south of Is^re, the favouring incident of plain should be expected, from the point at which any critic may require Hannibal to recross that river attended by his ally. 5. Through the country of the Allohroges. It is important to inquire into the position of this people ; and the importance of it is shown by the efforts which our antagonists make to get rid of them, by the confusion, the perversion, and the invention of history. All are ready to give the Allobroges wrong boundaries, or no boundaries : anxious only to erase them as an item in the argument. It seems to me that, as they are the only people named, from the 128 Polyhius interpreted. [part iv. Pyrenees to the plain of the Po, they claim particular notice when we seek to identify the line of march. Now the pas- sages of the history, where this people is expressly named, are these : — The friendly prince lent the aid of his force till Hannibal drew near to the Mps, because of the apprehensions which the Carthaginians entertained of the march through the Gauls called AUobroges. While the march was in the plain country, the several leaders of the AUobroges abstained from attacking them. When the Carthaginians were getting into the difficult places, the leaders of the AUobroges pre-occupied the pass. In forcing the pass, Hannibal destroyed, or put to flight, the greater part of the AUobroges ; and afterwards occupied the town whence they had come forth in the morning to the attack. It is thus an essential part of the history, that the progress from the confluence of the rivers to the first Alps was made through the people called AUobroges, and that the pass was forced, and the town beyond it occupied, against the resistance of many separate leaders of that nation. At whatever point began the Alps of Polybius, there was the struggle with the AUobroges : and those who say with Dr. Arnold, that " it " does not appear whether the Carthaginians ascended the " left or the right bank of the Is^re, or continued to ascend " the Ehone, and that these uncertainties cannot be removed," must embrace in this uncertainty whether the AUobroges of Polybius were on one side of the Is^re or the other. Dr. Arnold does not mention them at all : but Mr. G. Long, who has two articles in Dr. Smith's Dictionary, AUobroges and Insula AUobrogum, speaks of them as north of Isere, and gives no hint of their being to the south of it. Where then in the time of Hannibal, or in the time of his historian, dwelt the AUobroges? Was the district, which is CHAP. II.] First Alps. Mont du Chat. 129 so clearly and minutely described as the Island, the Island of the AUobroges? And was the southern boundary of the Island, the Isere, also a boundary of their possessions ? One of our strongest opponents, M. Letronne, conceded the former point, when he said, " Cette ile est done I'insula Allobrogum." — Journ. des Savans, Janv. 1819, p. 27. The concession is complained of by M. Larauza, who says of M. De Luc's argu- ment, that it is "forte, et tres forte, mais surtout centre " M. Letronne, qui, pla9ant dans Tile les AUobroges, fait k " ses adversaires, et bien gratuitement, une concession tout " h> son d^savantage." M. Letronne himself regretted the concession : for, in a subsequent number of that work, he retracted it, saying he was without information on the subject. But we can afford to lose M. Letronne as a believer in the Allobrogian Island. We have the ancient authorities that this people spread beyond the Island to the north and east. Geneva belonged to them : and their north-eastern boundary may perhaps be drawn from that town by the lake of Annecy to Conflans, where they bordered on the Centrones. The Is^re was a boundary of their island to the south : Polybius plainly places them on the right bank. What we know of the left bank opposite to them, places there in succession the Segalauni, the Yocontii, and the Iconii, otherwise called Uceni. The most diligent mystifier of the AUobroges, M. Larauza, says (" Hist. Critique," p. 35) : " Nous convenons que du tems " de Cic^ron, de C(^sar, et meme avant, les AUobroges occu- " paient tout ce pays qui se trouve entre le Saone et I'ls^re : " c'est encore Ik que, plus tard, les pla9ent Strabon et " Ptolemee, en leur donnant Yienne pour capitale. Mais " ^taient-ils la k I'^poque dont il est ici question ? Les seuls " auteurs qui puissent fournir quelques lumi^res sur ce sujet " sont Polybe et Tite-Live." It is true that these lights are VOL. I. K 130 Polyhius interpreted. [part iv. enough for those who will construe them. But there are other sufficient authorities to the same purpose. Caesar, relating his march from the interior to the ulterior Province, says, i. 10, that he arrived " in fines Vocontiorum, " inde in Allobrogum fines : ab Allobrogibus in Segusianos : hi " sunt extra Provinciam trans Ehodanum primi." Now, to enter the Allobroges from the Yocontii, he must have crossed the Is^re : and to get on to Lyons, the chief city of the Segusiani, he must have marched through Allobroges and crossed the Rhone. In the year which followed the murder of Csesar, Plancus, proconsul in the ulterior province, who had been coming to the relief of Modena, wrote to Cicero — " ipse in AUobrogibus constiti," X. 11. In his next letter, when starting to oppose Anthony, who was flying into Gaul by the maritime Alps, he says — " itaque in Isar^, flumine maximo, quod in finibus est Allobrogum, ponteuno die facto, exercitum traduxi,"x. 15. In another letter, he reports that he is advancing, having secured the bridge on the Is^re, for D. Brutus's force to follow on arriving from the Graian Alp : and in another, x. 23, that he has been obliged to retreat through the Vocontii, crossing the Is^re and destroying the bridges. This letter is dated " Cularone,* ex finibus Allobrogum." I think there is another letter, in which the Isere is mentioned as separating the Allobroges and the Segalauni. Strabo, after placing the Vocontii along the Durance, iv. 179, says that they reach northward through mountain valleys ixexpi' * A Wo/3/9 t7«v — 203, And of the Allobroges he says, that they are the occupiers from the Isere to Lyons ; and of Vienne he says, that it is now raised to the rank of a city, where those of high distinction live ; but that, in the earlier * The ancient name was Cularo ; in a later day Gratianopolis, whence Grenoble. Civarone and Cujarone are also found in niana- scripts. CHAP. II.] First Alps. Mont dit Chat. 131 days of their power, it had been their metropolis, when only a village. Pliny recognises a similar division of peoples by the Isere : he says, iii. 5, " In agro Cavarum Valentia : Vienna, AUobrogum." Ptolemy, in his catalogue of States and Towns of Keltoga- latia Narbonensis, ii. 10, says : — " Of those who occupy the " country east of the Rhone, the most northerly are the " Allobroges, whose city is Vienne, in the middle of them : " and next to them are the Segalauni, whose city is Valentia : " below them the Cavari." These testimonies are calculated to satisfy most persons on the position of the Allobroges. But the partisans of the Hannibalian controversy are not persuadable like the rest of mankind. Larauza is prominent among a host of critics who, interpreting the Allobroges of Polybius, deny to them all local habitation. He designates them as "une population essentielle- ment vagabonde : " whereupon Letronne, repenting in December of what he had laid down in January, that the Insula was Insula AUobrogum, consents to be ranked among the ignorant — " On " pent assurer que nous ignorons tout-^-fait I'etat des choses " au tems d'Annibal. Comment se faire une objection de ce " qu'il est impossible de connoitre." — Jonrn. des Savans, Dec. 1819. An anonymous Englishman of bolder chronology declares, " Nor is there any account of the Allobroges that will " assist in the present question till about two centuries after " Hannibal's entrance into their territory." Cambridge, 1830. Such conception of ubiquity in this people enables the advocates of the Cenis, the Gen^vre, or the Viso, to place the overthrow of the Allobroges by Hannibal in any part of Gaul south of Isk^e, which may suit a theory : one slaughters them near St. Bonnet — another on the Ubaye — another in the valley of the Arc — one catches them, after he has got over the Cottian Alps, in the valley of Cesanne. The curious thing is, that these writers limit the privilege of being Allobrogian K 2 132 Polyhius interpreted. [part iv. to the regions south of Isere: regions throughout which in- numerable peoples are acknowledged with their own well- authorized names. It is denied only to the island, a country for whose inhabitants no ingenuity has ever suggested any name other than AUobroges. I cannot help thinking that, for knowing who lived in the Island, the narrative of Polybius is much to the purpose. But M. Larauza says, p. 37, that the vagabond life of the population of that period makes topographical distinction impossible. He is content with the etymology of Bochart. " Ce mot AUobroges est compost de deux mots, all qui veut " dire limit, et hro qui signifie terre, dont on tire aisement le " nom de montagne, et celui de montagnard, qu'on rend par '' celui d'AUobroge."* Each expression of Polybius is twisted to favour the ubiquity of the AUobroges ; that they were not a nation, but many " peuplades distinctes," as Larauza would explain Kara fiipo<; Tjyefiove^; : and he apologizes for Livy not having understood the word AUobroges. It seems to me that these separate leaders were influential members of one state. The commonalty in an old Celtic people were subject to the control of an aristocracy, while they owed aUegiance to the government of the nation. In a civil war for the chiefdom, each leader of a clan would exercise his separate influence — it was to be expected that some of iSiese, '* quorum auctoritas apud plebem valebat," should be in movement with their immediate dependants. Larauza thinks his view to be confirmed by the expression ^AWofiplycov KoXovjuievcov TaXarcov, as if it was meant for a name not national but descriptive ; and so applicable to many peoples. He might have seen that the term koXov- /jbivov is common with Polybius, on mentioning a thing which his hearers may not already be acquainted with. Larauza's * Or see the Gallobriges of Mr. Whitaker, and Briges and Brogue, i. p. 136. CHAP. II.] First Alps. Mont du Chat. 133 fancy suggests a most unfortunate illustration ; namely, that AUobroges may then have comprehended the Tricastini, Vocontii, and Tricorii, also mentioned by Livy. This is a bold denial of nationality. Just before the death of Poly bins, the Vocontii suffered a great defeat by the Romans, and there was a consular triumph over them ; two or three years later, the Allobroges were defeated, and there was a consular triumph over them. You might as well include the Allo- broges under a common denomination of Vocontii, as the Vocontii under a common denomination of Allobroges. Besides the skirmishing efforts, which have been noticed, for placing the Allobroges everywhere or nowhere, the adver- saries profess to have ascertained that that nation was not on the right, but on the left bank of the Ts^re. And one argu- ment is, that Polybius must have viewed them as a distinct people from those who inhabited the Island ; inasmuch as he calls that enemy Allobroges, but calls the inhabitants of the Island Barbarians. There is no such distinction, though the suggestion was first made by one of high authority. Polybius tells of the two brothers in the Island contending for the sovereignty : one expects therefore that the com- batants in a civil war, if they were Allobroges on one side, would be Allobroges also on the other. Professor Schweig- hseuser, in a note on this passage, says, " Duos illos fratres " de regno contendentes, Allobroges fecit Livius, xxi. 31. " Polybius vero hoc cap. vers. 13, et cap. 50, 2. satis disert^ " ab AUobrogibus eos distinguit. Credi tamen potest, varias " fuisse AUobrogum gentes." Larauza, p. 35, adopts the distinction. " Polybe ne nomme " nuUe part le peuple qui habitat I'lle : il dit que le chef de " cette nation escorta les Carthaginois qui s'effrayaient d'avoir " k traverser le territoire des Gaulois nomm^s Allobroges." Dr. Ukert, p. 190, develops the same idea : — " The inhabit- " ants of the Island are not mentioned by name, but are only 134 Polyhius interpreted. [pakt iv. " spoken of in general terms as barbarians. Polybius names " the Allobroges as being inhabitants of the country through " which Hannibal pursued his march when he set out again : " they are Gauls : they dwell in the plains, and are under " many chiefs. According to the account of Polybius, we " must look for them in our maps south of the Isere." Mr. Ellis in his Treatise, p. 133, asserts that it is clear from Polybius, that the Allobroges were not inhabitants of the Island in Hannibal's time. In my criticism, p. 17, I pointed out the causes which had led to that error. Mr. Ellis, in his Defence {Journal of Philol. ii. 316), without replying to my comments, adopts the substantive error himself, and is as proud of it as if he were the inventor. He proclaims that the Allobroges were south of Is^re, and denounces the con- trary notion as absurd. He neither defends the view of Schweighaeuser and Ukert, nor combats my remarks, but brings out a new idea of his own. He gives in translation sentences from the 49th and 50th chapters, and where Polybius speaks of the allied force he adds the words, " The men of the Island;" and then pronounces judgment thus: " Now if for ' the men of the Island ' the expression AUo- " broges be substituted, these two passages become absolute " nonsense. That the men of the Island were the Allobroges " of Polybius, is thus a proposition at once susceptible of a " reductio ad absurdum'' Mr. EUis seems to defy us to meddle with Polybius ; but in fact he is only defying us to meddle with himself: he is the inventor of the expression " men of the Island." I subscribe to the doctrine which he calls absolute nonsense, and am quite prepared to add the idea " AUobrogian " in both places of the text ; but I should not thereby substitute it for a term which never was in the text. Schweighseuser, Larauza, and Ukert had been misled by this. They saw that Hannibal's friends were called /3dpffapoi, CHAP. II.] First Alps. Mont dtc Chat. 135 and they saw that his enemies were Allobroges. Hence they hastily concluded that the two must be distinct nations, and were emboldened to place them on different sides of the river. But they were not distinct nations. Polybius has first men- tioned the country which he so fully describes, not by the name of the nation or inhabitants, but by another name, the Island. He announces the arrival of Hannibal, not at the country of the AUobroges, but at a region called the Island ; and, having explained why it was so called, he continues to speak of the country under that name; mentioning, among other things, the contention for the sovereignty of it, and all this without occasion to express the name of people or inha- bitants. But on the first occasion, when people or inhabitants are to be named, which is when he states the apprehension entertained about marching through them, he speaks of them by their name Allobroges, and any doubt which may have been is relieved. The error of supposing that the inhabitants are called Bar- barians in contrast with the Allobroges, rests on this : that, When the narrative is bringing us to the Alps, the leaders of Allobrogian detachments are said to abstain from attacking the Carthaginians in the plain country, being deterred partly by their cavalry, partly by the barbarian escort. This was supposed to show a contrast between Allobrogian and barba- rian. But it is not so. It is true that this barbarian escort belonged to the Island, but so also did the Allobrogian enemy. If you read forward, you will find that the term " barbarian " tends to identify Hannibal's ally with Allobroges, not to dis- tinguish them from Allobroges : it is applied to both. In the next sentence but one, we read what was done by the general of the Carthaginians, when he learned that the barbarians had taken possession of the advantageous posts. He occupied those posts, when the barbarians, according to their practice, had withdrawn for the night ; and we read of the attacks made 136 Polybius interpreted. [part iv. by the barbarians, when in the morning these things were per- ceived by them. The barbarians are the AUobroges themselves. Botli in the one instance where the friends are called bar- barian, and in these instances where the enemy is called barbarian, the word means, in effect, " native," and is used in contrast with Carthaginian, as it is used elsewhere by Polybius in contrast with civilised nations. This contrast is particu- larly marked in the instance on which the adverse argument is built-; the troops of the ally are called barbarian, being mentioned together with the Carthaginian cavalry, and would have been called so, if their proper name, Allobroges, had occurred twenty times before. The distinction is in frequent use. In the third book, where Polybius describes the opera- tions of Hannibal, against the Carpetani and Olcades, these peoples are called by their proper names in one sentence, and the barbarians in the next. So in the thirty-third Book, c. 8, where the contrast is with Eoman, the Oxybii are named in one sentence, and called the barbarians in the next. In fact, there is no more contrast here between Barbarian and Allobrogian, than there is, in c. 47, between OrjpLa and eXec^avre?, words employed in one sentence to signify the same thing. Our adversaries, flattering themselves that they have swept the Allobroges of Polybius out of the Island to the other side of the Isere, grow bolder, and seek to push them still further south, and near to the shore of the Mediterranean. Dr. Ukert, iii. 591, says of the Allobroges : " When in earlier times men- " tion is made of wars which they undertook, they appear " (stehend — stand) quite in the most southern part of Gaul." These references are given : — Polybius, iii. 50; Strabo, iv. 186; Livy, xxi. 31 ; Dion Cassius, xxxvii. 47 ; Florus, iii. 2 ; Livy, Epitome, Ivi. — ciii I do not find a word in these passages referred to that warrants the assertion that tlie Allobroges are spoken of by these authors as inhabitants of the south. They are exhibited CHAP. II.] First Alps. Mont du Chat. 137 fighting for a short time south of Is^re, but not inhabiting. In the year when the Eomans, invading Gaul, pushed their course up the Ehone, Allobroges are seen fighting a few miles above Avignon, " ad oppidum Vindalium ; " and again near the confluence of the Isere and the Ehone. What then ? If in the previous year they had sent a brigade across the Durance in aid of the Salluvii, would this locate them south of Durance? Does the field of battle enable you to fix the national boundaries of the combatants ? A military nation threatened with aggression need not stay at home to receive the enemy. When many peoples are breathing the same hostility to the sweeping ambition of one domineering state, some will come to fight on the soil of their neighbours. Many tribes left their own villages and joined force on mountains not their own to oppose the progress of Csesar through the Alps : and some of these had shortly before descended into the plain of the Ehone to aid a rebellion against the supremacy of the great republic. Her conquests would have been more easy, if each people had fought only on its own ground. In the same view of giving a laifce date to their position north of Isere, Larauza had imagined and laid down a history for the Allobroges, with an outline of historical fact asserted positively and without obscurity. He says, pp. 37, 38 : " C'est " en de9a de ITsere, et surtout dans la partie la plus md- " ridionale de la Gaule, que Ton voit se passer la plupart des " guerres qu'ils eurent k soutcnir contre les Eomains depuis " la premiere, Tan 630 de Eome, jusqu'^ celle qui mit fin " a leur independance, I'an 692. Nous serious meme assez " fondes a croire que ce dut etre vers cette epoque que, " subjugues par les Eomains, ils furent repousses au-del^ de " ris^re, et forces de se renfermer dans le pays looni^ par se " fleuve, la Saone, et le Ehone." This statement has the one merit of perspicuity ; it asserts, that a course of warfare was sustained by the Allobroges for a 138 Polyhius interpreted, [part iv. period of 62 years — from 630 to 692 u.c. : that is, from 124 to 62 B.C. : that their independence was then at last crushed, these wars having been carried on by them in the most southern parts of Gaul : that, though when Strabo wrote they were restricted to the north of Is^re, yet, in the time of Caesar, they had only just been driven within that boundary. Now, though M. Larauza was a laborious, zealous, and amiable man, and Dr. Ukert enjoys a very high reputation for the knowledge of ancient geography, I conceive this continuous warfare of the Allobroges with Eome to be an unauthorized notion ; a mistake of a few simple facts, which are these. At the beginning of the period spoken of, the AUobroges in one campaign lost their independence and became subject to Rome: at the end of that period they broke into an insurrection, which was presently quelled by the Prsetor of the Province; and in the intermediate time there were no hostilities at all. The first entrance of the Eomans into Gaul by land was in the year 154 B.C., when they came to protect the Massilians against the Oxybii and Deciatse. Polyb. xxxiii. 4. By this interference, which occupied little time, their friends were established in the possession of an increased territory. The Romans did not cross the Maritime Alp again for 29 years. They then went again in aid of the Massilians : this was in 125. In 123 they defeated certain transalpine Ligurians, who were supported by the Vocontii.* In the next year, 122, they founded their first colony beyond the Alps, Aquse Sextiae, Aix en Provence ; subduing the Salluvii, who seem to have had some assistance from the AUobroges.f In the * It appears from the Fasti Capitolini, quoted by Mr. Clinton, Vol. iii. 1 30, that the Vocontii had fought against Fulvius Flaccus : for he is recorded as having a triumph over them. f Velleius Paterculus states that the Allobroges joined the Sallyes in resisting the Romans under Sextius, i. 15. CHAP. II.] First Alps. Mont du Chat. 139 following year, 121, the proconsul Domitius ^nobarbus de- feated the army of the Allobroges ; and the consul Fabius also routed them with prodigious slaughter, together with the Arverni and Ruteni, a great force having been brought into the field on the part of the Gauls. Thus speedily was effected the subjugation of the Allobroges. These three campaigns led to the erection of the Province : and never did the Allobroges regain their independence. The accounts of their subjugation are consistently told by Strabo, Livy, Pliny, and others ; and there is no reason to think that, when they became subject to Rome, there was any change in their boundaries. From the earliest to the last of the extant historians, all give in effect the same representation of this Gallic war of five years, and the consequence of it to the nation of Allobroges, who in the last year bore a prominent part. Ammianus Marcellinus, writing 500 years after the trans- actions, says this : " Hse regiones, prsecipu^ quae confines " Italicis paulatim levi sudore sub imperium venere Ro- " manum : primo tentatffi per Fulvium, deinde prseliis parvis " quassatae per Sextium, ad ultimum per Fabium Maximum " domitse : cui negotii plenus effectus, asperiore AUobrogum " gente devicta, hoc indidit cognomen." Lib. xv. Such was the first AUobrogian war of M. Larauza. Where is the next? Having assigned to a particular district "la " plupart des guerres depuis la premiere. Fan 630, jusqu'^ la " derni^re. Tan 692," he might be expected to bring to our attention something that happened between those two ex- tremes. But he furnishes nothing. Neither in his work, nor elsewhere, is there an act of discord between the Allobroges and the Romans after that first short war of conquest, until the very end of the stated period, "Fan 692." In that year things are recorded, which M. Larauza treats as the climax of a continuous contest : and, because this people is seen for 140 Polyhius interpreted. [part iv. a month or two in arms at the end of that period, he pre- sumes that they had been fighting against Eome throughout the interval. But in truth even that one fact is misrepre- sented : it was but an effort of insurrection speedily quelled. The only authorities on the subject seem to be Livy and Dion Cassius. There is an interesting question on the identity of places : but it does not affect our inquiry. There cannot well be a stronger specimen of exaggeration than the sixty-two years' struggle proclaimed by this critic, founded only on a few conflicts, which cannot have occupied many weeks, at the close of that period. If this rebellion had been serious enough to require a Koman reinforcement to cross the boundary of Italy, which it did not, how stands the assumption, that these hostilities concluded a long contest ; and that up to that moment the Allobroges maintained their independence ? Two years before this affair of Ventia, we find them to be clearly in a state of subjection. In 691 u.c, was the conspiracy of Catiline : and the accounts of that event show that the Allobroges were at that time subjects of Eome. Their envoys were at Eome, preferring charges against their rulers or magistrates. P. Umbrenus, an agent of the prsetor Lentulus, who was a chief performer in Cati- line's plot, sounds them by entering into a discussion of their grievances. " Postquam illos videt queri de avaritia magistra- " tuum, accusare senatum quod eo auxilii nihil esset ; miseriis " suis remedium mortem expectare : At ego, inquit, vobis, si " modo viri esse voltis, rationem ostendam qua tanta ista mala " effugiatis." * They pledge themselves to the conspiracy ; and afterwards repent of it. " Quinto Eabio Sangse, cujus patrocinio " civitas plurimum utebatur, rem omnem, uti cognoverant, ape- " riunt." Fabius reports these disclosures to Cicero, who frames the scheme that ensures the public safety : and the senatorial * Sallust. Bell. Catilin. c. 40, 41 ; and see Appian. de Bello Civ. ii. 430. CHAP. II.] First Alps. Mont du Clmt, 141 traitors forfeit their lives through the evidence of the Allobroges. The charge against their magistrates, the grumbling at the non-protection of the Senate, the patronage of the Fabii, the very act of assenting to the conspiracy, all show the Allobroges to have been at this period in a state of political dependence. Thus the alleged probability of the Allobroges having been first driven beyond the Is^re in the year 692, vanishes, with all the statements on which it is built. They lost their indepen- dence in 630 : and, while there is no evidence that they ever regained it, there are ample circumstances tending to satisfy us that they did not. See the progress of events in the south of Gaul during that very period, the sixty years of which we speak. What is it but the continuous progress of Eoman power ? The foundations of it were laid gradually but strongly. We may look back to the eighty years that preceded those sixty years, the time of the Ligurian wars, wars with those who shut up the avenue to Spain with their mountains on the sea — airoKeKkeuKOcrt, ra? et? r^v ^l^rjplav nrapohov^t ra? Sta T^9 7rapa\ia<;. Strab. iv. 203. While that struggle lasted, Eome was becoming acquainted with the politics of Gaul through their maritime communications with Marseille and the Ehone. Under pretence of defending the interests of her allies, as Livy calls the (Edui, she attacks the nearer of the transalpine states. The first colony is founded, Aquse Sextiae. Then is the downfall of the great states, the Yocontii, the Arverni, the Allobroges. The colony of Narbo is established. Outer Gaul is now their battle-field against the barbarians who had overrun Spain, and carried their hopes of plunder to the plain of Italy. The famous canal is constructed by Marius for avoiding the shallows at the Ehone's mouth, offensive to navigation. Not restricted to maritime communication, the Eomans now marched to the Pyrenees and Spain through countries that owned their mastery. Toulouse is garrisoned, 142 Polyhi'us interpreted, [part iv. and a Koman general can withdraw his troops into France for winter quarters. Finally, before the end of the sixty years' imaginary war, the higher central Alps are laid open to the rush of Eoman armies into their Gaulish^ and Spanish provinces. This is the period in which it is assumed that, during such progressive movement of Eoman power, the Allobroges were stemming the torrent and defying a pressure to which their neighbours had to yield. The notion put forth by Larauza, and assented to by Ukert, as a basis for the migration of Allobroges northwards beyond the Isfere in the latter days of the Roman republic, is nothing less than this — that this humbled nation, who had flourished in the south towards the Mediterranean, bordering on states treated with less severity than themselves, rallied from their defeat in 633, and main- tained a series of unrecorded wars, which, after sixty years, were concluded only by the surrender of Ventia and the burning of Solonium, told by Dion Cassius. I believe both those places to have been in their northern and original terri- tory : and I hope it has appeared that a march through the Allobroges, the fifth and last requisite for our accordance with the Polybian narrative, is, with the rest, truly fulfilled by a march from the confluence of the rivers to the Mont du Chat. CHAPTEE III. Adverse Theories on the beginning of Alps. Tivo hy which Hannibal marches forward in the Island. Mr. Whitaker, going through Geneva, finds the Alps of Martigny. Mr. H. L, Long, going through Grenoble, finds them at Fort Barraux. I HAVE now to deal with this terminus, the first Alps, as it has been variously fixed in the several theories hostile to my CHAP. III.] First Alps : other points N. of Ishre. 143 own. In explaining my own views on the subject, I have contrasted them to some extent with others. Nevertheless I will adveit to the dva^oXrj of each other theory seriatim^ only not repeating matters already discussed. First, let us take the two schemes of march which, as well as our own, proceed from the Island without turning back to recross the Isere. I encounter Mr. Whitaker as the champion of the Great St. Bernard, seeking his first Alps at Martigny ; and Mr. Henry Lawes Long, who, on entering the Island, proceeds through Grenoble to his first Alps at Fort Barraux, and then joins us at Montmelian. March hy LyoTis and Geneva to Martigny. Mr. Whitaker, Among the English commentators, Mr. Whitaker stands forth as the laborious, and 1 believe the most recent, advocate of the Great St. Bernard. And he may be considered to have contributed greatly to the discussion of the matter. General Melville, whose effort to explain Poly bins was made in 1775, communicated his notes of what he saw and thought to Mr. Whitaker and M. De Luc. In 1794 Mr. Whitaker pub- lished a long work in support of the Great St. Bernard, and against the views of General Melville. In 1818 M. De Luc was induced to publish his excellent work, having become acquainted with the General in 1795, and finding his own views to correspond with what he learned from him. He has not failed to speak his opinion of Mr. Whitaker's merits — " Anim^ du diabolique esprit de contradiction, en- " train^ par une imagination desordonnee, et priv^ du sens '' commun quoiqu'avec une prodigieuse erudition, il voulut •' se frayer une route differente de toutes celles qu'on avoit " imaginees jusqu'a lui, sans s'embarrasser des absurdit^s " sans nombre dans lesquelles il devait necessairement " tomber." 1 44 Polyhim interpreted, [pakt iv. I will deal with Mr. Whitaker as I find him. I do not dwell upon his mode of reaching the Ehone, as none are following him. He asserted, that Hannibal, after crossing the Pyrenees, quitted the coast, and made his march through Carcassone, Lodeve, Le Vigan, and Anduse, and so came upon the Ehone at a part opposite to the influx of the Drome, and crossed to a place called Loriol. Mr. Whitaker selected this place as being half-way between Lyons and the sea ; knowing it by means of another circumstance which he reports, namely, that Aries is at the mouth of the Ehone. This fact, which also is exclusively his own, removes in favour of his hypothesis the length of Ehone usually recognised below Aries ; and brings his place of crossing so much nearer to the sea. In conformity with these views, Mr. Whitaker makes Hanno's division to cross the Ehone three miles above the influx of the Is^re ; so as to have crossed the latter river before he comes down to take the enemy in flank. Being satisfied that a BLa^acrcf; at Loriol fulfils all the requisites of the Greek narrative, Mr. Whitaker conducts the march up the Ehone, and in four days brings the Carthaginians to Lyons ; where his Island is the ground now occupied by the city and enclosed by the two rivers and the hills which over- hang the place. After settling the affairs of the Segusiani, he replaces Hannibal on the left bank of the Ehone, and continues the march undeviatingly along the windings of the river, by Seyssel, Geneva, and the Lake, to Martigny. I am not aware that these tenets have received assent, saving in the applause of Mr. Tytler (Lord Woodhouslee), who promptly published a pamphlet in express commendation of Mr. Whitaker's discoveries. When we remember that Polybius represents the passage of the Ehone to be a short four days' march from the sea, that he attributes 1,400 stadia from that passage to the beginning of Alps ; and prescribes 1,200 from the beginning of Alps to the plain of Italy, we CHAP. III.] First A Ips : other points N. of Mre, 145 might be satisfied, without more, to dismiss the Great St. Bernard from the list of candidates for representing the pass intended by Polybius. But, though it would be a waste of labour to scrutinize such a journey through all the tests of conformity with the Greek history, some notice is fitly bestowed on a known writer, whose zealous display of learning upon our subject is among the curiosities of literature : we add to the security of truth by encountering all that has pretended to illustrate her. I shall, however, endeavour to comprise in this chapter all that needs to be said on Mr. Whitaker's construction of Polybius, that I may not recur to it on further topics : also, as he vibrates in his feelings of respect, such as it is, between the two ancient authorities, I hope to be excused if, while I interpret one, I notice his treatment of the other, disregarding in this instance my own rule of criticism. Mr. Whitaker expresses his satisfaction, that Polybius is confirmed by the authority of Livy in bringing the march to Lyons as the Insula of the history. Prom that place Hannibal marches along the Ehone, being attended as far as ■Geneva by the " friendly King of Lyons ; " and keeping close to the banks of the river, with the stream on his left, Mr. Whitaker discovers a blot in the Eoman historian, for turning at Lyons to his left hand instead of his right : but upon the whole applauds him for his improvements on the Polybian narrative, in the progress to Geneva. Among other things, he considers Livy to have forwarded the knowledge of the truth by introducing the river Druentia. He represents that the Arve, which falls into the Ehone at Geneva, is not navigable, and that the Druentia of Livy is "non navium patiens :" that therefore the Arve is the Druentia of Livy. Dwelling on this discovery, as he says p. 145, with a parental fondness, he rejoices in the confirmation of it by Strabo. That writer has told us, iv. 203, of a river called VOL. I. L 146 Polybius i7iterpre(ed, [part iv. Druentius, whicli, rising in the highest summits, runs into the Ehone. This Mr. Whitaker declares to be the torrent which, rising near the Col du Bonhomme, rushes down the Val de Montjoye, and joins the Arve at Passi. After quoting Strabo on the Druentius rushing to the Ehone, and the Doria on the other side of those mountains mixing with the Po, he says, " This quadrates very accurately with all that I have " said of the Arve ; and forms a full demonstration of itself, " that the Arve was actually denominated the Druentia or " Druentius by the Eomans." i. 141 — 150. Having still further settled the identity of this river by the aid of Silius Italicus, Mr. Whitaker forwards the ex- pedition under the auspices of Livy, who reports Hannibal to have reached the Alps " campestri maxim^ itinere," which he thinks to have peculiar application to a route from Geneva to Martigny. i. 157 — 160. Having travelled some way amicably enough with the two ancient authorities, Mr. Whitaker begins to suspect a want of harmony between them. Not doubting that Hannibal climbed the Great St. Bernard, and knowing, from the third book of Caesar's Commentaries, that, in order to get there, it was expedient to pass through the Nantuates and the Veragri, he is shocked to find these nations quite overlooked by Polybius, who actually brings Hannibal to the ascent of the Alps in 1,400 stadia from the passage of the Ehone. Mr. Whitaker rebukes him in these words : — " All that march " of Hannibal, though it was pursued through a couple of " nations, is totally omitted by Polybius. He considers the " position of Geneva as the beginning of the Alps ; therefore " carries Hannibal a hundred miles from Lyons, and instantly " sets him to enter the Alps. Hannibal, he teUs us, having " marched along the river about a hundred miles, began the " ascent of the Alps. This is certainly one of the many " deficiencies, and of the very important too, that just criticism CHAP. III.] First Alps : other points N. of Isere. . 147 " must for ever lament in the narrative of Poly bins. A range " of country about sixty miles in length is annihilated by the " negligence of this writer ; and we find a great gulph yawn- " ing wide before us, when we would pursue his march of " Hannibal with geographical fidelity. Yet such has been " the reverence shown to the pen of Polybius, such the " idolatry paid to his name, that his very faults have been " consecrated with his excellencies, and the erring mortal " has been enshrined in the glory of the Divinity. Though " Livy comes in very happily to supply his deficiency here, " and exposes it very strongly by supplying it, yet little " attention has been given him, and the historical world has " generally preferred the falsehoods of this Plato to the truths " of Livy. Livy, indeed, has hitherto been considered by " all, not as he ought to have been, not as an equal planet " with Polybius in the horizon of our history ; but as a kind " of satellite only to him, attentive to his movements, re- " fleeting his brightness, and hardly noticeable in the lustre " of his beams, and this false idea has contributed to give " a false turn to many parts of the history of Hannibal." i. 168—172. Notwithstanding the contrast thus portrayed, it is difficult to perceive that Livy has so happily supplied the defects of his rival, yet from Martigny to the summit he appears still to supplant him in the favour of Mr. Whitaker. At St. Branchier, above Martigny, Mr. Whitaker brings Hannibal among the Salassi — and says in a note, p. 232 : " Livy is most luminously " particular here, while Polybius wraps up all in a dull gene- " rality of narration/' At Orsi^res a conference is held with natives, some coming from places higher up, Liddes and St. Pierre : and Hannibal is over-reached by their cunning. The Salassi offer to guide him by a better route ; so he casts off liis own guides, turns away with these new friends into the Val de Bagnes, and ascends the eastern branch of the Drance. l2 148 Folyhms interpreted. [part IV. This brings the army to the Eock of Luttier * the destined scene of the outbreak of the treachery ; on which Mr. Whit- aker, p. 274, note, says, " Livy alone informs us of this bold movement in the Salassi, xxi. 34." In pp. 202-3, we find that the assailants received so severe a chastisement that they presently vanished ; Hannibal is exhibited as returning to the guidance of his Italian friends : he still struggles onward, the line of glaciers edging close upon his left, among which Mr. Whitaker names, from a map in De Saussure's second volume, those of Chermotane and La Valpeline, and in another direc- tion those of De Tzeudy or Valsoret, as north or west of Mont Noir and Mont Yelan, embarrassing his movements and com- pelling him to feel his way. It is said that " Livy is the only " historian supplying this portion of the narrative, Polybius "by an unpardonable negligence omitting all notice of it." Again, p. 284, " Polybius smothers that history, which we see " so lively and so active in Livy, concerning the dubious, the " circuitous, the retrograde progression of Hannibal in his " march from the hill of ambuscade to the crest of the Alps." We learn from Mr. Whitaker, that, "moving in a line in " which no army ever moved before or since, Hannibal reached " the regular road at St. Pierre, which he had left five days " before at Orzieres, only about seven miles below." " The " next day he found himself happily mounted, with all his " army, upon the real ridge of the Alps." — P. 289. It is right to mention, that, in spite of the apparent satisfac- tion with which Mr. Whitaker seems to accept the aid of Livy, there comes a moment when he spurns it altogether. It happens that that historian has declared in unequivocal terms that Hannibal did not come over the Great St. Bernard : and * I presume this to be the place mentioned as Lourtier in the very interesting account of an excursion in 1856 by Mr. W. Mat- thews. See 3d edition of " Peaks and Passes," published by the Alpine Club, p. 23. CHAP. Ill] First Alps : other points N. of Isb'e. 149 for tliis error, he falls, pp. 133-4, under the lash of that para- mount authority which is relied on throughout the work. Mr. "Wliitaker remarks that " Livy's testimony is of no weight ; " that it is opposed by the whole tenour of Polybius's history, " and encountered by the whole tenour of his own ;" and thus condemns him : — " The historian, who stands striding like a " giant across the plain and by the temple on Great St. " Bernard, brandishing his iron mace, and forbidding me all " passage with Hannibal along that avenue, I am compelled " to face, because he stops me ; to knock down because he " would dislodge me ; and to march over his prostrate body " (if I can) into Italy." As if this were not enough, Mr. Whitaker presently quotes the heretical opinion of Livy, and proceeds : — " This is all a mass of inaccuracy, forgetful- " ness, and error. I am sorry to use such language con- " cerning such a writer : but it is necessary to the assertion " of truth and the ascertainment of the history. There is a " false modesty hanging upon every mind that comes to " examine a writer of Livy's celebrity in the world of history, " which would chill the current of examination, and bind up " the critical powers of the judgment in a kind of frost, if we " were not on our guard against it ; if we do not prevent its " benumbing influence by continual exercise." i. 350. This explosion coincides with a principle before disclosed, when Mr. Whitaker ridicules the writers " who feel their " weakness too sensibly to walk upon their own legs, and are " obliged to hobble on the crutches of authority." We look back to see how Mr. Whitaker walked himself without his crutches, and gave his clenching argument for the Penine Alps. It was this — that Hannibal came by a road ; a formed road : that there was in those days no formed road over the western Alps : that the tribes upon the Alps made no roads across their mountains, nor suffered them to be made by others : that they were in hostility with all mankind till the 150 Polyhiiis interpreted. [part iv. days of Augustus, who reduced many of these tribes, and carried along the mountains a train of formed roads. These ideas are so laboured by Mr. Whitaker from p. 100 to p. 125, that one began to expect that Hannibal cannot have come over the Alps at all. But at last a circumstance is disclosed which relieved the author from that conclusion. It is this: that though even in the days of Caesar those- western Alps were in a wild and ferocious state, and fur- nished no good passage from Gaul into Italy, yet in the northern Alps there was such a passage. Mr. Whitaker appeals to Caesar's account of Galba's exploits, where, speaking of the Great St. Bernard, he says that he desired to lay open the road through the Alps, by which the merchants had been used to travel. " This," says Mr. Whitaker, 123-4, " shows us the one only formed road of the times." And he adds, p. 124, " All this coincides in an extraordinary manner with " the movements of Hannibal. He goes not towards the " Alps of Mont Genevre. He knows there is no formed road " over them. He knows that the only formed road is on the " northern side of the mountains, near the rise of the Khone," We certainly read that Caesar was desirous of laying open a road over the northern Alps ; but this does not lead to the inference that Hannibal had found a well-formed road there in earlier times : and, as to tliose northern Alps alone being practicable, we happen to know that Caesar had in his previous campaign himself crossed the western Alps, carrying his army over the Genfevre in his expedition to stop the Helvetii. Mr. Whitaker anticipates this remark, and disarms it, by admitting that Caesar did not in that instance cany his legions by a formed road, inasmuch as there was none. Accordingly he apologises for Caesar having taken such a course of march, pleading the urgency of the occasion, p. 105, " He was too eagerly bent upon his plan of operations, at " this grand commencement of his Gallic warfare, to take the CHAP. III.] First Alps: other 'points N. of Mre. 161 " customary way fix)m Italy to France. He wanted to push " directly into the north of Dauphiny. He entered the Alps " at Ocelum, that is, Exilles : he turned off short on his right " at once : passed Mont Cenis close on his right, and Mont " Gen^vre remotely on his left : and he fell in probably with " the line of the future road from Grenoble to Brian9on at " Villars d'Arenes." On one point we shall agree here with Mr. Whitaker ; namely, that in Caesar's time there was no formed road from Exilles or anywhere near it across country to Villars d'Arenes : we would assent, if he had said that there never will be. But, whatever was Caesar's route from the inner to the outer Province, if it was good enough for him, why not good enough for Hannibal? Why was an African invading Italy to be more fastidious concerning a formed road than a Eoman general hurrying to a Eoman province? And was not Hannibal eagerly bent upon his plan of operations ? But let us inquire what could be Mr. Whitaker's ground for sup- posing that Csesar had the advantage of a formed road in his northern Alps and not in his western Alps ? Is it the word " iter " that haunted his mind, so as to warrant the contrast ? I see nothing else in his quotations that could suggest this idea of a formed road, as the peculiar incident of the northern track. He quotes, p. 123, " Causa mittendi fuit, qu6d iter " per Alpes, quo magno cum periculo magnisque portoriis " mercatores ire consueverant, patefieri volebat;" and then says, " These words show us the one only formed road of the times through the Alpine mountains." On this we have still to ask, " Why formed ? " and why the only one ? The " iter" through the Penine is spoken of by Csesar as a track used for merchandise ; but which he wished to improve into a route for armies : for this purpose it required patefaction. It escaped Mr. Whitaker's observation, that Caesar also applies the word " iter " to liis route over the 152 Polyhms interpreted, [part IV. western Alps : the difference is, that he does not say that this route required patefaction ; indeed, we have good reason to believe that it had undergone patefaction by Pompey, about sixteen years before Caesar resolved to patefy the Penine. The word " iter " was prominent in Caesar's short account of his march through western Alps : indeed, Mr. Wliitaker quotes every word of that account (pp. 103 — 106), excepting these : " qu^ proximum iter in ulteriorem Galliam per Alpes erat, " ire contendit." Mr. Whitaker, however, could not be expected to acknow- ledge Pompey as an improver of the Gen^vre pass : for he informs us, that that general had himself taken advantage of the Penine when he led his army into Spain ; a fact which is not disclosed by any authority prior to Mr. Whitaker. It happens that Pompey, speaking in a dispatch* of having crossed the Alps, says, " Per eas iter aliud atque Hannibal, nobis opportunius, patefeci." Mr. Whitaker, p. 123, not daunted by these words, and "in deference to common sense," corrects " aliud " into " idem ; " and so makes Hannibal and Pompey go the same road. With equal facility he brings Appian to confirm the fact. That writer, though his geo- graphy is rather queer, plainly states that Pompey went a very different way from that of Hannibal : " de Bello Civ." ii. 419. Mr. Whitaker, however, not only understands that it was the same, but gives Pompey's reason for pursuing that line ; a reason which must have been highly satisfactory to the Eoman Senate. " Pompey declined the more direct route " over the western Alps, and took the circuitous road across " the northern, because this was Hannibal's, and because he " was proud to emulate Hannibal." i. 122. In summing up the merits of the light which he has thrown on this point of history, Mr. Whitaker acknowledges his obligation to the ancient historians to a degree beyond * Salliistii Fragmenta. CHAP. III.] First Alps : other points N, of Ishe. 153 what might be expected. He professes to have conducted Hannibal from the Rhine to the Po, "stage by stage, and " step by step, as the concurring narratives of Polybius and " Livy have held out the clue. Geography has united with " history to confirm their narrative and my account." ii. p. 230. Notwithstanding this generous expression of gratitude, I look upon Mr. Whitaker as exempt from the foible which I impute to most modern commentators, a vain desire to reconcile conflicting testimonies: he swears only by one master. Let all who have any misgivings in favour of the Great St. Bernard, study Mr. Wliitaker's volumes. They may rise from the perusal cured of their error. They will find much research of various matters drawn from all ages : much excellent sentiment, moral and political, which, though not bearing at all on the invasion of Italy, well becomes the worthy man who delivers it. He abounds in historical illustration, as in comparing the revolt of the Segusiani with the revolutions of France and Poland ; and establishing the Alps of Hannibal by modern references. If the publication had been delayed till after the battle of Marengo, we should have had additional chapters, proving the route of Hannibal by that of l^apoleon. The events told excite throughout the feelings of the writer ; as in the chastisement which he inflicts on the native obstructors of the Carthaginian progress. The inhabitants of the valley of Aosta appear not to have molested the Carthaginian march in their descent; a circumstance which constitutes one of Dr. Arnold's doubts on the route. Mr. Whitaker, on the contrary, imputes the great calamities of the march to the treacherous conduct of that people : and for that purpose locates them on the ascent, and thus rejoices in the discomfiture of their machinations. " The well-fabri- " cated balloon of Salassian villany had burst with its own "gas within, and those who were mounting to the clouds 154 Polyhius iyiterpreted, [part iv. " in it were thrown to tlie ground, severely hurt ! " Many- are his reproofs of dissentient critics. Menetrier and Breval, who in their dealings with Lyons rivalled Mr. Whitaker himself, have this as their reward : " The sepulchral lamp " of the antiquary goes out the moment we come up to day- " light, and leaves only a smoke and a stench behind it." Equally crushing is the solemnity with which, after demon- strating Druentia to be the Arve, he condemns some who would construe it the Durance. " The whole backbone of the history is bent double by the violence of this folly." But abler specimens than these will be found of the vituperative powers of this writer. He has faithfully fulfilled his own injunctions to the intellects of others : " To prevent the benumbing in- fluence of false modesty by continual exercise." There is an author, a man I believe of high reputation, who, in his zeal to fulfil one of the conditions of Polybius, violates all the rest, still further pursuing the valley of the Ehone, — M. Arneth, Director of the Museum at Vienna. His views on the subject were published in the " Wiener Jahr- bucher" for 1823, and they are criticised, as well as those of Dr. Ukert, by Dr. Thirlwall in the third volume of the " Philological Museum." M. Arneth does not pause with Mr. Whitaker at Martigny ; but, in order to make sure of a descent into the Insubres, and to bring Hannibal to Milan, carries the Carthaginian army over the Simplon. Perhaps in an improved edition, Hannibal will explore the Ehone to his glacier, eVl Ta<; ir'qydf}, cross the Furca, and lead the invaders into Italy over the St. Gothard. Through GrenoUe to Fort Barraux. Mr, Henry L. Long. The notion of a march up the right bank of the Isere is likely enough to suggest itself to an observer of the map of France. CHAP. III.] First Alps : other points N, of Iskre, 155 But we have to try it by the text of Polybius : and if his history, rightly construed, shall be found to express that Hannibal, after entering the Island, still pursued the valley of the Rhone, the theory of Grenoble cannot stand. Other difficulties present themselves to the doctrines of Mr. Long. The local features are known and admitted. The Oxford Dissertation says, p. 64 : — " The rocks on the northern bank " of the Isere came formerly so close to the river, that it " would have been impossible to have turned them." Mr. Long himself, who more than all has studied the environs of Grenoble, says, p. 57 : — " The precipices of the Sassenage and " the cliffs of the Grande Chartreuse lock so closely, that the " entrance of the valley leading to Grenoble is in some " lights absolutely undistinguishable ; and we are at a loss " to know whence the river can possibly come." So speaks the critic who is taking much pains to prove that Hannibal's march lay through the town of Grenoble. So sensible was he that the army could not have passed through that place without opposition from the AUobroges, that he asserts it as the scene of their conflict with Hannibal. To obviate the numerous objections, he has recourse to that peculiar inter- pretation of the text, which I will set forth and examine. Mr. Long's work is entitled " The March of Hannibal from the Ehone to the Alps." Now, though he constantly quotes two or three lines at a time from the Greek text, he never quotes the few words of Polybius which describe that par- ticular section of the march on which he writes. He gives, in the historian's own words, the previous section of the march, from Emporium to the Rhone ; but not that which follows, from the Rhone to the Alps. Accordingly he never deals with those words of the 39th chapter which exhibit that march as " 1,400 stadia along the river." When he is upon the narrative of events in c. 49, and is beginning the march up 156 Poli/hiiis interpreted, [part IV. the Ehone, which, as we have seen, he crosses at Tarascon, he notices the expression Trapa rov irorafjuov, saying that it shows the march from the passage to be up the Ehone ; and he observes that that expression occurs frequently in Polybius : yet somehow he seems to have missed them in the earlier chapter, where that expression is applied to the whole march from the Ehone to the Alps. Not that he was unacquainted with that chapter : for he fully acknowledges 1,400 stadia as the distance from the passage to the Alps; but he only connects a portion of it with the Ehone. He exhibits the component parts of that distance in a way peculiar to him- self: he does the 800 as soon as the Ehone is crossed ; and, as he crosses it lower down than most other interpreters, 600 would not bring him to the Is^re : so he takes the 800 to be from the crossing, and by that means professes to get as far as Valence, saying, p. 50 — " The distance of 800 stadia, " 100 m.p. ' along the river,' having expired at Valence, we " must at that town turn away from the Ehone, and con- " sequently take the road leading towards Eomans." Tliis innovation on Polybius is aided by another, also original. It is commonly thought that four days brought Hannibal along the river to the Island ; and that ten days then brought him 800 stadia further, the two being separate and independent efforts of progression ; and that the last of the two brings Hannibal to a point, where an interpreter of Polybius is bound to find a beginning of Alps for him to contend with. My friend's hypothesis is shortly this — Hannibal, crossing the Ehone at Tarascon, at once made a march of- 800 stadia from thence to Valence, marching it in four days: he remained there six days, communicating with certain friendly bar- barians, the Segalauni : a body of whom joined their forces with his, and assisted liim in his progress to invade the land of the Allobroges : with his allies, he entered the Island at Eomans, and pursued the present line of route to Grenoble : CHAP. III.] First Alps : other points N. of Is^re. 157 the plain country, in wliicli tlieir aid was of service to him, came to an end at Moirans, at which place they left him, and returned home. Long speaks of " the contest between two " "brothers for the sovereignty of some Celtic tribe, the name " of which is not given by Polybius ;" but, though Hannibal assisted one, and was recompensed with abundant supplies, it was not this party who attended and gave security to the march until they got near to the passage of the Alps. These are still the Segalauni. Long had once thought with the Oxford Dissertation ; but is sincere in his new opinions. He says : " I had always, till " lately, believed that the distance of 800 stadia along the " Khone ought to be measured north of its confluence with " the Isere. But, 1. The thing cannot be done. 2. If they are " measured after Hannibal's arrival at the Insula, wherever " they terminate, the Alps ought to begin." I hope I have shown, in a past chapter on irapa tov TTora^ov, that the thing can be done : and that, at the ter- mination of the 800 stadia, the Alps do begin, the Mont du Chat being the dva^oXi]. I may give quotations of Long's own words to the contrary. In p. 44, having quoted in Greek the first sentence of the 50th chapter, he translates it thus : — " Hannibal, after ten " days, having marched along the Ehone to the distance of " 800 stadia, began the ascent towards the Alps." He pro- ceeds : — " The historian here sums up the time and distance " passed by Hannibal on the banks of the Ehone previous to " his striking away from that river towards the Alps. The " 800 stadia is exactly the distance between Tarascon and " Valence ; and the ten days seem to be composed of the " four days' march from Tarascon, added to six, which we may " safely assign as the period of his stay among the friendly " barbarians." Long had already said, p. 37 : — " In my own * mind I have not the slightest doubt but that Valence was 158 . Polyhius interpreted. [part IV. " the scene of these operations." Now it was likely that a reader would be startled at hearing of an ascent from Valence : this is indicated in p. 47, where Long points out that the avapoKri was tt/jo? ra? 'AX-Trei?, " towards the Alps " — not Twv 'AX-TTfewj', " of the Alps." Now let us try to imagine some practical difference between the expressions : my friend cannot profit by it here : he plainly contradicts the history. Long says that Hannibal began the dva^oXr} 7rp6dpay^ or ■)(apdhpa. I will advert to what has been said by modern writers on the two passages alluded to. In the Oxford Dissertation, p. 91, the description is this :— " On the left bank, just above the bridge by which the modern 202 PolyUm inter^yreted. [part v. " road crosses the Eeclus, stands a high white rock of gypsum, " called in the country universally La Koche Blanche. The *' Eeclus runs under its side, and is confined in a very deep " rocky channel. On the other side of the rock is a woody " ravine, through which another small stream flows, which " afterwards comes down through Villars to Scez. The " remains of the Roman road made by Augustus have been " discovered in the neighbourhood of Villars, and it probably " went up this woody ravine in the manner laid down in the " plan.* From the words used by Polybius, (pdpayya tlvo. ** Bvcr^drov koI KpTj/juvmSrj, which apply extremely well to the " bed of the Eeclus, we might be tempted to suppose that the " army had marched up this torrent : but this passage would " have been so difficult, that I can hardly conceive it possible " to have been accomplished. The Eoman road, though very " much exposed to the attacks of the barbarians, would have *' been more easy." This statement invites comment on the two tracks mentioned. Now that which is up the bed of the Eeclus is, I conceive, at the present day not only extremely difficult, but utterly im- possible : yet it need not have been so 2,000 years ago. The bridge is now just below the end of the white cliff; and the traveller, in crossing it, hardly sees the river running to him : for a high mass of large accumulated rocks, covering the stream, prohibits all prospect in that direction. In the precipitous ascent through St. Germain, I certainly do not remember that I could see the torrent at all, as it flows to that great obstruction : and, when we had attained the higher ground above St. Germain, and were advancing towards the Little St. Bernard, the channel was too deeply sunk below for one to perceive the character of its immediate banks. I am not aware that any investigator has scrambled down to it for the purpose of examination ; but believe that our acquaintance * Sketch of the Passage in that work. CHAP. II.] Ascent. Little St. Bernard. 203 with this ^dpar/^ is limited to the fact that there is now no entrance to it. But this does not conclude the subject of inquiry: two thousand years ago the passage may have been free from the masses of rock by which it is now blocked up ; these deposits may not at that time have been detached from the mountains and brought into their present position, where they are arrested by the narrowness of the channel between two precipitous sides. When these obstructions did not exist, the shape of this trough and the character of its banks onwards may have permitted the operations which the history describes : the immediate banks of the stream higher up may not be very steep ; and the onward tread of man and beast need not have been limited to the soil which is covered by the waters. I would observe also, that the sides which were pre-occupied by the assailants must have been practicable : if very steep, they would not themselves have moved so nimbly along them : and, if very rugged, there would not have been due freedom for the rolling of rocks and the hurling of stones, which are the acts of hostility recorded. On the 19th September, 1854, as I looked on the stream just below the bridge, it seemed, that one might have stepped across from one stone to another, without much wetting the shoes. I know not in what state it was a month later : but there was only one day of rain at Courmayeur in the interval to the 25th October, when my son walked over the mountain on his return to Oxford : the weather was rough, but no snow lay on the plain of the Little St. Bernard. On the 11th No- vember, another friend, bound for London, took the same walk from Courmayeur, and had no snow in his path. They did not, however, notice the stream. It would be vain to insist on the particular state of this channel in the time of Hannibal, either in regard to rock or water : no one, that I am aware of, takes the trouble to examine it now : and I can fully believe. 204 Polyhiits interpreted. [i'ART v> that the enormous rocks which blockade it have arrived since that period : it may be that neither rock nor water at that time prohibited the progress of the expedition. As to the other suggested passage in rear of the White Eock, the sketch, in the Oxford Dissertation, gives the line of it, and shows the rounded and worn-out end of the Eoche Blanche standing into the plain of Scez, and a second similar projection into it from the mountain behind the rock, at some distance to the south-east, with a line drawn between them to represent the Eoman track. Afterwards, p. 95, they say : " It had been " in Bonaparte's contemplation to carry a new road up the " ravine where the Eoman one passed, and we saw traces of " the preparations that had been made for it." Wlien I passed through Villars to the bridge, I was wholly unconscious of this second promontory, or of any sort of opening in the mountain after passing Villars : my impending illness had subdued all energy, and power of scrutiny ; and I omitted to look out for it. General Melville first noticed the White Eock, as illustrating the statement of Polybius. His notes have never been pub- lished, but M. De Luc, who had them, writes thus :* — " Ces " circonstances et une autre dont je vais faire mention, firent " juger au General Melville, lorsqu'il traversa cette montagne, " que, dans le tems d'Annibal, la route ne traversoit pas le " torrent, mais qu'elle montoit le long de sa rive gauche. " D'apres cette opinion, formee par la lecture de Polybe et " I'inspection des lieux, le general auroit voulu monter par " Ik pour examiner cette vallee de plus pres : mais son guide " s'y opposa, en disant que c'etoit un vieux chemin tres " mauvais, abandonn^ depuis longtemps, et que les contre- " handlers seuls frequentaient : il ajouta, que depuis la route " actuelle qui suit la rive droite du torrent, il pourroit ais^- " ment juger de la nature de I'ancienne. Le General Melville * 2d edition. 1825. P. 173. CHAP. II.] Ascent Little St. Bernard. 205 " remarqua, qu'en effet le local repondoit parfaitement k la " description que fait Polybe d'un passage difficile au pied " d'une tnontagne escarpee." I conceive this to refer to some onward point high above the right bank, after you have left St. Germain, and are beyond those heights which face the Eoche Blanche, and can look back to the exit from the second ravine said to be behind that rock. Mr. Brockedon has spoken of Hannibal's passage not only in his admirable work on the " Passes of the Alps," but in other publications. In a journal of an excursion in the Alps, third edition, 1845, p. 148, after saying that "Hannibal passed around and behind the Eoche Blanche," he adds : " In the surveys of " this pass which were made under Napoleon, in contem- " plation of the formation of a carriage-road over the Little " St. Bernard, the engineers were led to decide upon the old " Eoman road as the intended line." I remember hearing Mr. Brockedon speak as having some acquaintance with that ravine, if such it should be called : but I do not feel certain whether he said that he had gone through it. I believe that neither he nor any one has written on the interior of such a passage. As to the angiistice of the Eeclus itself, all I know with certainty is, that it is impenetrable now. A man might, I apprehend, go forward and climb down to it, and make examination of it. A day devoted to this task would be a day well spent. Such are statements made by modern authors, which seem to affect the question on the ravine of Polybius. On the XevKoirerpov, I should say that, whatever ascent of Alps may pretend to be that of Hannibal, it ought to exhibit a rock corresponding with that of Polybius : he rarely notices local peculiarities, and, when he has pointedly marked an object like this, we may expect it to admit of recognition at the present day. Some theories exhibit a XevKOTrerpov : not all. M. Larauza 206 Polyhius interpreted. [part v. found it in the Eocher de la Barmette between Termignon and Lanslebourg. Mr. Ellis found it in the rock of Baune, between St. Jean de Maurienne and S. Michel ; and we accept the whiteness of those rocks on their reports. A writer in " Blackwood's Magazine " of June, 1845, says that he found it on the summit of Mont Cenis, " of magnitude to be a place of night refuge to Hannibal" ! Some see no occasion to point out a white rock : M. Letronne, on behalf of Mont Gen^vre, intimates, Janv. 1819, that he could find one for his theory if he tried : " II n'existe point de " passage dans les Alpes oii Ton ne trouvat quelque roche " blanche, puisqu'il y a de gypses blanchatres sur tons les " cols de la chalne." M. Larauza says of this assertion : " Elle est, je crois, fort hasarde : j'avoue, pour mon compte, " que sur les points que j'ai parcouru en traversant soit le " Simplon, soit le Grand St. Bernard, soit le Mont Gen^vre, " je n'ai remarque nulle part de montagne de gypse dont " la blancheur fut sensible." The Little St. Bernard is not among M. Larauza's exclusions. M. Letronne, however, seems to deny that XevKoirerpov is a white rock : he relies on the translation by Schweighseuser, " deserta nudaque petra," and says : " II est facheux pour cette " decouverte du General Melville, que dans Polybe le mot " XevKOTrerpov, qui revient plusieurs fois, soit pris comme le " XeayireTpa des autres auteurs, pour Xeto? X/^09, et ne signifie " rien autre chose que roche nue, escarp^e : c'est ce qui est " prouve surtout par un passage du livre X." " Revient plusieurs fois " is a very rash expression : the followers of M. Letronne are welcome to conceive that Xev/c6<; may mean " smooth ; " but, whatever it means, it recurs in Polybius, not " plusieurs fois," but only in that one passage x. 30. 5. He is describing the progress of an army through a defile in Hyrcania, obstructed by masses of rock fallen from precipices on either side ; and he states that, while the lieavy forces CHAP. II.] Ascent. Little St. Bernard. 207 were obliged to proceed along the bottom of the valley, an ascent Bv avrcov r&v XevKOTr'rpcov was not impracticable to the light-armed troops. I have no authority to refer to for the character and colour of these Hyrcanian rocks : the pre- sumption is that they were white, shining, conspicuous ; they may also have been bare, and steep, and slippery. But Xev/co? vi termini imports none of these latter qualities ; any face of rock, not obscured by vegetable matter, whether it be gypsum, limestone, granite, or any other, is bare, uncovered ; but such is not the sense of Xeu/co? ; the primary sense is " conspicuous," from Xao), video. The meanings " bright " and " white " are not far removed : those terms represent the effect of colour to the eye. Bareness may be a cause of conspicuousness ; but it is not sufficiently akin to the original sense that it should be represented by the same word. When a lady's arms are uncovered, you may apply the epithet Xev/ctwXevo? ; but we do not construe \€vKco\evo<; "Hprj, bare-armed Juno. I believe that the word XevKOTrerpov, as meaning an indi- vidual of a species, is found in no other author, and only in these two passages of Polybius. But we find the same com- bination in proper names ; and in such instances the names have been bestowed upon rocks or mountains, for the reason that they are white. There is XevKOTrerpa on the coast of Italy, of which Strabo says, p. 259, cltto Be toO ^Frjylov TrXiovri TTpcx; €0) AevKoirerpav Kokova-cv dfcpav airo 7^9 %/)oa9, " They " call the promontory, which you approach coasting southward " from Ehegium, Leucopetra from its colour." So \evKa opr) in Crete are reputed to have their name from their constant covering of snow. Theophrastus says, iv. 1, ev KprjTrj yovv ^aalv iv ToiCkiav irpo^ avTov^. iii. c. 52. Some may infer from the word KaOrj^efioaLv, that these natives must have become the authors of a track of march to be adopted by the general, and may assume that they led him into a false track, though no such fact is told. This is not reasonable : the inhabitants of a country can be useful to soldiers as to others, and may be called guides without being the directors of a line of movement. Can we believe that these barbarians were in the counsels of Hannibal? The friends from the Italian plain, Magilus and his companions, enjoyed his confidence ; they were pledged otI KaOrfynaovrat CHAP. II.] Accent. Little St. Bernard. 209 Sia Toirtov TOLovrcov, &c. The useful spies, who ascertained the enemy's plans at the first Alps, also called guides, /cadrjyovfjbevoi, were in a trust superior to that of the bar- barians of the Is^re : it was policy to tolerate the attendance of the latter, and to put on the semblance of trusting them ; but there is no hint that Hannibal ever ceased to suspect them, or laid aside his precautions. Who, then, can believe that they were allowed to interfere with the route of the army? On the wise direction of this all safety depended. Hannibal had those whom he could trust; and the entire narrative imports that he kept his intended track. If he had withdrawn his confidence from approved friends, and trans- ferred it to the natives of the invaded valley, the success of treachery might have been realized at Scez, and the arma- ment have been forwarded to destruction on the glaciers of the Isere. Dr. Arnold may be considered as assenting to our march till it ultimately quits the Is^re, though he is not prepared so to construe Polybius. He had examined these' scenes more than once: and it would be interesting to know which he looked upon as the right path, which Hannibal was dissuaded from following. He seems almost to assent to the channel of the Eeclus as that which he did follow : for he says in his own history : " At last Hannibal with his own infantry forced his " way to the summit of one of the bare cliffs overhanging the " defile, and remained there during the night." Polybius says nothing about " the summit of the cliff," but " cliff overhanging " the defile " rather accords with Eoche Blanche and the Eeclus. Dr. Arnold does not otherwise favour our XevKoirerpov : he says, iii. 480, note M. : — " I lay no stress upon the Eoche " Blanche : it did not strike me, when I saw it, as at aU con- " spicuous : nor does XevKoirerpov mean any remarkably white " cliff, but simply one of those bare limestone cliffs which are " so common in the Alps and Apennines." In this Dr. Arnold VOL. I. P 210 Polyhius interpreted. [part v. follows Schweigliseuser and Letronne. But the rock is not limestone : I am assured that it is common plaster-stone ; gypsum ; hydrated sulphate of lime. I have had opportunity to get one for myself, and have specimens from H. Long and Brockedon. When broken, it has the whiteness of fine loaf sugar : and though the brilliancy will not be sustained under exposure to climate, we may think that a lengthened precipice of such material was well selected by Polybius to mark the scene which he commemora.tes. It is curious, that the two ravines near the White Kock, whose existence is testified by the clearest evidence, and which invite the attention of every one who knows the con- troversy on the ascent of this mountain, should be so im- perfectly explored. I cannot myself doubt 'that both were used by the combatants of 118 B.C. But the blocks of mountain rock which have come to choke up the trough of the Eeclus, have, I suppose, dissuaded all from exerting them- selves to the examination of its present state ; so as to see what it woufd be without the rocks. As to the hinder ravine to the east, one would think that it must always have been comparatively easy ; but of that also there is no published account. General Melville abstained from exploring it, and Mr. Brockedon, if he went through it, has never printed an account of his doing so. Accordingly doubt may remain as to which of the two ravines is the defile where Polybius conceived the enemy to have made preparations for overwhelming the invaders with missiles. If some sensible man will make his abode for two or three days at Bourg St. Maurice or Scez, and will investi- gate the ground through both ravines, he may throw con- clusive light on these difficulties. But the solution of them is by no means essential to our main question. If the Carthaginian army ever came to the site of Bourg St. Maurice, there was no choice on their further way to Italy. CHAP. II.] Ascent Little St. Bernard. 211 Character of the Conflict. Having collected some statements of modern witnesses on the scene of action, it is expedient to notice, in addition, the character of the conflict as seen in a few facts alleged by the historian, and to apply the tale of what was done by the combatants, whether in attack or defence, to the scenes we speak of. Polybius states that the barbarians assailed the Carthaginian armament on their march through a difficult defile ; and that the heavy armed infantry, who were in the rear, withstood the onset and saved the army. Nevertheless a considerable loss was sustained : and he gives the reason why a great number, not only of men, but of horses and baggage-cattle, who were in the van, were destroyed : the cause was in the nature of the hostilities practised in the ravine, the stratagem of injury by missiles. This inflicted much loss : but the main onset was from the rear, and was repelled by the heavy troops — eo-je^av rrjv iirn^opav rcov ^ap^dpwv. It seems that, before the column of march had arrived at the defile, a certain multitude of the barbarians had already occupied it, and taken post on the lateral slopes, so as to be able to inflict injury in the way described : these, who so got forward, had deliberately prepared themselves for handling their weapons, rocks and stones. It became then essential that Hannibal's heavy battalions, who sustained the weight of the enemy in the plain, should arrest their further ingress into the defile ; not only by excluding them from the direct entrance, but by opposing their endeavours to get round by any way towards the head of the column which was moving onwards, and to prohibit any attempt upon the heights which skirt the plain behind the White Eock, or which belong to the other side of the Eeclus. If the mass of the barbarians had not thus been kept back, the artillery which molested the advance in the defile would have received p 2 212 Polyhius interpreted. [part v. continual reinforcements, and the passage would not easily have been purged of their harassing assaults. It is clear that the natives never attacked front to front : if the dwellers on the Iske could have brought out their strength in time to face the invaders, they would not have done it : their object was plunder with the smallest risk to themselves. Had they attacked at a lower part of the valley of the Is^re, there would have been danger of retaliation upon their own possessions. The scenes were now passed in which vengeance would have been injurious ; the strangers were in view of the desired heights, and longed only to surmount them with the least delay. If indeed you suppose that the policy of the barbarians would have been to face the advancing army, they had hardly the option of doing so. This armament visited their valley as a sweeping pestilence, and waited not : they saw it as it passed : they followed, and following gathered strength : they chased a foe willing to fly, themselves unable, had they desired it, to intercept the flight. Thus the mass of the native force was necessarily in rear of the invaders : and we must conceive the attack to be made when the army, after a pause in the plain of Scez, was moving from it, and had begun to thread the narrower track where the enemy made preparations of injury. When the danger began, the column was compressed in part within the defile : freer and more elastic in the open ground behind. The success with which the onset was here withstood by the heavy armed troops is told by express words : but we are left to conjecture how the fighters with rocks and stones were disposed of: it is consistent with the narrative to suppose that they were hunted out by the lighter troops, and at length dislodged from their positions and overpowered by numbers. Still the onward progress had to be guarded against fresh intruders from each direction : and it was not before the morning dawned, that the whole army had defiled on to the CHAP. II.] Ascent Little St. Bernard. 213 open mountain. This sketch of the engagement will be found warranted by the words of the history : the main shock of arms was not in the ravine. There is an incident in the narrative, which I think has been misunderstood : we read, mo-t dvajKao-Orjvac rov 'Avvlffav fiera Trj<; i7/xtcr6/a? Swdfieo)^ vvKTepevaaL Trepl tI XevKoirerpov 6')(vpov %G)pl9 rSdv iTTTroyv Ka\ tmv VTro^vylayv, icpeSpevovra TovTot<; — " so that Hannibal was obliged to pass " the night, with half his force, about a certain white rock, a *' tenable post, away from his horses and baggage cattle, in " reserve for their protection." My notion is that Hannibal so stayed back to withstand the weight and bulk of the enemy, which was always on his rear ; and to prevent them from making their way round and reinforcing that system of attack on the van with which the conflict had begun. I conceive that those first aggressors must have been rooted out from their positions of offence before the night came on; and that the great business was to prevent a recruiting of that force from the multitude in the rear, where the enemy was most formidable in numbers. The sentence in which irepl XevKoirerpov occurs, seems to have been accepted, as showing that Hannibal, by his occupa- tion of the summit of a cliff, protected the passage of the army during the night. In the Oxford Dissertation it is said : " The position of the Eoche Blanche was eminently cal- " culated for the defence of this march : from hence Hannibal " commanded the whole plain of Scez, and was able to act " against the enemy, on the heights above St. Germain, as " well as upon those on the flanks of the road." Dr. Arnold writes : " At last Hamiibal with his infantry forced his way to " the summit of one of the bare cliffs overhanging the defile, " and remained there during the night, while the cavalry and " baggage slowly struggled out of the defile." Hist. iii. 88. M. Larauza is so persuaded that the upper surface of a cliff is 214 PolyUus interpreted, [pakt V. the thing spoken of, that he considers (p. 115) half of the army to have stood upon it at the same time. Now it is probable that, after the struggle by which the ravine must have been purged of its barbarian occupants, a sufficient number of the Carthaginian force were posted all about this rock, so far as it was possible to post them : and one need not object to the conjecture that, while daylight lasted, the archers and slingers might act upon a hostile force appearing on the opposite bank. Still the idea which the words dpayKaa-Orjvai, vvKrepevcraL irepi XevKoirerpov convey to me is this : that Hannibal kept possession, through the night, of the surrounding ground to which this cliff belonged, the ground outside the gorge and where the enemy were most in force ; and that, to give security to the toilsome passage of the great armament, which was con- tinuing its ascent from the defile and up the mountain, it was necessary that he should maintain himself in the open ground from which the passage was entered. There I conceive that he passed much of the night under arms : and, as the other portion of the army was struggling onward, there ensued a discontinuance in the whole line of movement : but his com- munications ceased to be forcibly intercepted; and, by the time that day had dawned, the assailants had melted away, and the rearmost of the Carthaginians under their great leader were free to pursue their onward course to the summit. It may be that the epithet oxvpov, tenahle, has inclined some to think chiefly of the upper surface of this rock, as a position to be gained : but it need only import generally a station of defence : the sentence has no word of movement, and vvKTepevaai irepi imports none. The rock probably was always precipitous to the torrent: but we may not know what was the form which it presented towards the plain in the time of Hannibal, by the aspect which it presents now. I conceive that some centuries ago it must have extended far CHAP, in.] Ascent. Mont Genis. 216 more prominently into the plain: at the moment when I passed, a good-sized cart was employed near the bridge in carrying away portions of gypsum which a labouring man was detaching and removing ; and our White Eock may have been subject to the daily spoil of house-decorators and others, ever since its neighbourhood came to have a human popula- tion, in the early Christian times when a Church was planted on the heights of St. Germain. CHAPTER III. Ascent to the Mont Genis, Larauza. The Nine Days. Defile and XevKoirerpov. Two theories only can here be said to challenge considera- tion : for, on the line of march through the mountains. Dr. Ukert is but a disciple of Larauza, translating him and his Itinerary. Larauza and Ellis must be controverted separately. They reach the valley of the Arc at different points : they quit it at different points ; the XevKoirerpov of one is in special contradiction of the XevKoireTpov of the other : and they move over different summits. Larauza placed the dva^oXrj "AkTrecov at La Chavane : and, in doing so, desired to gain three postes into his mountain march. But a mountain march from the Graisivaudan up the Arc must be content to begin at Aiguebelle. The distance to it from La Chavane cannot be deemed space in the mountains, nor the time between them be reckoned as time in the moun- tains. The defile at Aiguebelle is the first point which, to M. Larauza coming up the valley of Graisivaudan, could represent the dvajSoXr) "AXirecov. He says himself (p. 66) of aU the pre- vious ground from La Chavane, — " L'on n'est pas dans les Alpes." 210 Poll/bias interpreted. [PART V. But when M. Larauza gets to the defile of Aiguebelle as a beginniiig of Alps, there is a question whether he finds such a mountain as corresponds with that which the Allohroges had to defend. We say that the Carthaginians fought their way- over a mountain. This M. Larauza denies : he calls it, p. 98 : " entree des Alpes, et non la montee des Alpes." " Si le mot " dvajSoXij d^signe quelquefois Taction de traverser en montant, " 11 pent aussi designer celle de traverser en penetrant." He hardly tolerates the word as connected with the idea of ascent ; saying, — "Polybe se sert en general pref^rablement du mot virep^oXri {vid. cap. 53) pour designer la montee des Alpes." This is a mistake : the word virep^oXrj is used twice in that chapter, and in both instances means unequivocally the heights themselves. M. Larauza would have been more prudent, had he been content with the metaphor by which dva^oXij signifies a beginning. Ascent is the beginning of transcent : you begin your mountain by ascending it. The first onset of other things is also called dva^oXri : when we speak of " striking up " as the beginning of a musical performance, we translate dva^oXrf. In relating a fox-chase, if we had to find a Greek word for the. throwing off, it would be dva^dXrj : listening to the leading hound one might say, as of the minstrel, dvefioKkeTo koKov delBeLv. M. Larauza might thus have had a pretence for beginning his course of mountain march at Aiguebelle. But he strains for more. Under the pretence of Hannibal preparing himself for the mountain attack when he got to La Chavane, he measures the mountain march from that place ; that is, by the road back from Montmelian. Now, though Hannibal, for the last day or two of the ten, might be laying his plan for forcing the first mountain, the day of encounter with the Allobroges was the first day of mountain, not the third. Larauza objects here to the term "mountain," saying, — "II s'agit non d'une CHAP. III.] Ascent. Mont Oenis. 217 montagne, mais d'un d^fil^." When he reads that the AUo- brogian chiefs were occupying tov9 evKalpovLK6^evo<;, &c., give facts which occurred in his progress through the island, as he approached the Alps. Besides the display of capital letters to give importance to his summaries, Mr. Ellis would impress upon us that the other facts are incidental, episodical, subordinate (pp. 22, 38, 39). The island is to him only the scene of an episode, because he intends to back out of it : he illustrates the episodical character by a very inaccurate statement, and which would not support his fancies, if it were true. He says (p. 23) : " Before pro- " ceeding to relate the transactions at the island, Polybius " arrests the march of the army at the confluence of the Is^re " with the Ehone, measuring the distance up to that point." Polybius does nothing of the kind. Hannibal's distances have not been measured since he left Spain ; and Polybius never measures the march up to the confluence at all. If we desire to measure it for ourselves, we must first refer to c. 39, when Hannibal was still in Spain : we there read among the five distances of the whole march to Italy, " 1,400 stadia from the passage of the Ehone to the beginning of Alps." There is no mention of the distance, as Mr. Ellis alleges, before proceed- ing to relate the transactions at the island. After they have been related, we shall read in the next chapter, that, having in ten days advanced 800 stadia along the river, he began the ascent. If we deduct this 800 from the 1,400, we recognise that it must have been 600 from the Btdl3acn<; to the island. The statement that Polybius, before relating the transactions at the island, arrests the march at the confluence and measures the distance up to that point, is a fiction. Those who will read Polybius's narrative of the march from the passage of the Ehone to the arrival in the plain, will see GiiAP. IV.] Ascent. Little Mont Cents. 233 as straightforward a tale of events as is found in any other history. Mr. Ellis bids us to expect that more than the explanatory particulars which occur in all narration will strike us as peculiar to this historian. But on examining the portions marked with Mr. Ellis's capital letters, together with the proximate sentences, we find no propriety in the designa- tion " Summary ; " and sometimes a striking unfitness. A careful reading of his introduction, annulling the promise of his Preface, which was " to try all by the narrative of Poly- bius," suggests no other object in the new division of matter made by this explainer of Polybius, than to disfigure Polybius and explain him in his disfigured state. The invention of Summaries is chiefly subservient to the perversion of dates. I am surprised that so marked and decided an interference with the text should not have been distinctly avowed by its author : and that it should be noticed only at the end of his introductory chapter, the tenor of which is contradicted by it. Though Polybius is thus slighted, his terms are nevertheless used in the titles of Mr. Ellis's chapters : as, — " to the com- mencement of the ascent of Alps ; " and " from the commence- ment of the ascent of Alps." We do not there read " to the town ; " and " from the town." And, in the discussion where the town has first to be mentioned, it is only insinuated, that it looked down upon the Carthaginian encampment ; — which is in order to give it an early position in the Alps. For my own part, I think it is to be inferred from the context of the narrative, that the town was quite beyond the evfcalpoi tottol ; and that, when the enemy had repaired to it for the night, they were no longer in sight of the posts they had quitted : also, that we must conceive the town to have been beyond the scene of the conflict which ensued the next day. There is no fair pretence for setting up the town to usurp the character of terminus between the fourth and fifth sections of the Polybian march. 234 Polybius interpreted. [paiit v. Mr. Ellis does not speak out as impeacliing the Polybian march, till he says (p. 32) : " The ten days' march from the "junction of the Ehone and Is^re, must be taken as terminating, " not at the point where Hannibal left the Is^re (Mr. Ellis's " 7roTayLto9), but at the town of the Allobroges, which he cap- " tured after passing through the defile at the commencement " of the Alpine ascent." He proves this, by saying, " The fifteen days of Alps are clearly reckoned from the town." I say, on the other hand, that Polybius calls the terminus dva^oXrj ; and, when Mr. Ellis calls it " the town," it makes two days' difference in a reckoning on which his peculiar theory depends : and further, that, to support that theory, he finds it necessary to reject two more days, without a pretence that any fair critic will justify. All for the Eock of Baune. This discord from Polybius which Mr. Ellis has invented is so pleasing to him, that he introduces " the town," when there is no need to mention it. In p. 54, he quits the summit with these words : " On the eleventh day after leaving the town, the Carthaginians began their descent into Italy." In p. 64, he brings the town prominently forward in a journal which he presents of the whole march from the con- fluence of the Phone and Isere to the plains of Italy ; stating it thus, in two parts : I. The ten days' march to the town of the Allobroges, including the halt at that place. II. The fifteen days' march across the Alps, fronfi the town of the Allobroges to the commencement of the plains of Italy. Before I say more on the shallowness of this Summary system, let me notice, as allied with it, the dangerous frame on which the Treatise is constructed. In the chapters where Mr. Ellis discusses the narrative from the passage of the Rhone to the plain of Italy, he lays down, from time to time, some condition with which a theory pretending to be based on Polybius ought to conform : the first is in p. 28 : the last in p. 63 : they are ten in number, and are put together at CHAP. IV.] Ascent. Little Mont Genis. 235 the end of the fifth chapter, following the journal ; which is framed according to Mr. Ellis's improvements on the text, or, as he expresses it, "elicited from Polybius." Having supplied all these conditions, and many minor ones, he points out, in chapter vi, that " there are four passes in which there is some prima facie probability : " and that " the examination which " leads to the rejection of three out of the four will not be " long." Accordingly he disposes of them in four pages : chiefly for want of a view, for remoteness from the plain, and for the want of Taurini : and tells us in p. 73, " The Mont Cenis remains alone with likelihood in its favour." The rest of the work, except what is given to Livy, is mostly devoted to examine whether the characteristics of the Cenis Pass are in accordance with the conditions derived from the narrative by Mr. Ellis. It might be expected that the conditions would fit them pretty well, having been made to order. I will mention the first and the last. The first is this : " The commencement of the Ascent of " Alps must be at a distance of about 100 Eoman miles from " the junction of the Khone and Isere, reckoned along the " left bank of the latter river." — Treatise, p. 28. The last is this : " The plains into which the road over " the pass enters, when it emerges on the side of Italy, must " anciently have been inhabited by the Taurini." — P. 63. But I must not omit the fourth, which has brought the Kock of Baune into so much favour with him who discovered it. It is this : " The White Eock is nearly half-way, in point " of time, between the town of the Allobroges and the summit " of the pass." — P. 66. Mr. Ellis's town is AUward ; but we do not learn that name till chapter vii. pp. 91, 93. Mr. Ellis speaks of its present importance, and of its preserving, in its own name, that of Allobroges : he says it is six miles beyond Le Cheylas.* * It is right to say that some have approved of these conditions. 236. Polyhins iyiterpreted. [part v. It is now to be shown, by what series of contrivances Mr. Ellis makes the Eock of Baune to be the XevKoirerpov of Polybius. I will then attend him to the summit. His fifth Summary, which he calls " Circumstances which took place while the army remained on the summit," will belong to another head of my subject. Tioo First Days of Alps removed hy Mr. Ellis. In the first chapter of this fifth part, I have allotted to each of the fifteen days which Polybius ascribes to the Alpine march, the work which belonged to it : and I believe such distribution of employment to be correct. When Hannibal is said to reach the summit on the ninth day, it means the ninth of the fifteen : this is required by the context of the narrative. I impute, that Mr. Ellis has thrown the chronology, and thereby the 'geography of the march, into confusion, by setting up a reckoning of his own against that of Polybius. We reckon the fifteen days of Alps, by beginning with the day of storming the defile and forcing the passage along the edge of the precipices, and afterwards occupying the enemy's town. Hannibal stayed an entire day encamped at the town : this was his second day of Alps. He resumed his march on ,- the third day of Alps. On the fourth day of that renewed \ march, he met a body of natives, and held conference with 7 I them. That fourth day of the renewed march was the sixth ? \ day of Alps. After the conference, the natives attended the ' march for two days before they made attack. The attack therefore was on the eighth day of Alps. Mr. Ellis reckons the fifteen days of Alps, by beginning with the march from the town, and so omits the two first In Mr. Ball's *' Guide to the Western Alps," p. 54, they are com- mended as giving Mr. Ellis's arguments in a condensed form, and the author expresses his obligations for them to a Fellow of St. John's, Cambridge, who is also a member of the Alpine Club. CHAP. IV.] Ascent Little Mont Cents. 237 days of Alps. He makes the fourth day of that resumed march to be the fourth day of Alps : and prepares to make the very same day the day of the attack, which he will try to do, by omitting the two days for which the natives attended the army after the conference and before the attack. We both profess to reach the summit on the ninth day. Our ninth day is the day following that of the assault, which was the eighth. Mr. Ellis's ninth day is the fifth day after that of the assault. Beginning his reckoning on marching forward from the town, he cuts out the day on which the army had fought its way over the mountain, and captured the town, and the day on which they remained encamped at the town. Mr. Ellis knows that Teraprato? imports the fourth day of the reijewed march, and therefore was the sixth day of Alps : yet he merges those two first days of Alps into the previous march of ten days along the river. The excuse is, that Mr. Ellis cannot think Hannibal would have been so long in marching 100 miles. In so getting rid of these two days,* Mr. Ellis does not pretend to follow the history : on the contrary, he says (p. 32) : " The march of ten days ought to terminate where the march of fifteen days begins." It must have occurred to him, that after those ten days Hannibal rjp^aro r?}? tt/oo? ra? "AXTret? dva^o\7]<;. Nevertheless, Mr. Ellis says, " It micst be taken as terminating at the town of " the AUobroges : from this town the march of fifteen days " is clearly reckoned." So, as the two first days of Alps are found inconvenient to the Baune theory, he throws them away as being already reckoned in the ten. Mr. Ellis corrects the chronology of Polybius thus (p. 33) : " It would be on the morning of the eighth day after leaving * Some have suggested, that the first day of Alps should be deemed the previous day, in the night of which Hannibal with a select body occupied posts in the absence of the enemy. In that case, Mr. Ellis has omitted one day more than I charge him with. 238 Polyhius interpreted, [part v. " the confluence of the Ehone and Isere, that Hannibal " encamped before the heights occupied by the AUobroges : " on the same night he seized the abandoned heights : on the " ninth the defile was passed, and the town captured : on the " tenth the Carthaginians remained in the neighbourhood of " the town." Thus Mr. Ellis ekes out his ten days of irapa TTorafiov with forcing the heights of Alps, and enjoying a well-earned repose in the Alps for the whole of the next day. Mr. Ellis is well aware of his variance from Poly bins — he says (p. 33) ; " Polybius estimates the length and distance of " a passage of the Alps, from the point where Hannibal left " the Is^re (the irorafiov of Mr. EUis) ; so that it might be " natural to expect that the fifteen days occupied in that " passage would be reckoned from the same point." How- ever, Mr. Ellis finds something still more natural : he pro- ceeds— "But from the rest of the narrative, it seems plain " that the fifteen days' march is reckoned from the town, the " capture of which makes a natural break in the history." Now, whether or not the critic be more natural than the historian, the text has in express terms made the break, where Hannibal, having left the river, rjp^aro Trj Let us now attend this critic to the end of his nine days. After the battle of Baune, fought on the fourth day of Alps, he makes Hannibal encamp for the night near the Eock, and then saunter on leisurely towards the summit. As he has here to fill up a period of five days with what in truth only occupied a few hours, he has thought it expedient to make two additional summaries for that interval between the Xeu/co- irerpov and the summit. I will give them as they appear with their details in Mr. Ellis's translation : — Part of Cha'pter 53, showing Fifth and Sixth Summaries, <6:c. Hannibal having on the following day, when the ENEMY had retired, REJOINED HIS CAVALRY AND BAGGAGE- animals, led on his army to the highest summits of the Alps, without meeting again with any considerable body OF THE Barbarians, although parts of his army were harassed by THEM AT VARIOUS PLACES ON THE ROAD.* For they, watching their opportunity, assaulted and carried off the baggage animals, sometimes from the rear, and sometimes from the van of the line of march. Upon these occasions, the ele- phants were of very great service : for the barbarians were so much alarmed at the extraordinary appearance of these animals, that they were deterred from attacking any part of the line of march where the elephants were to be found. On THE NINTH DAY HaNNIBAL ARRIVED AT THE SUMMIT OF THE MOUNTAINS ; AND, ENCAMPING THERE, REMAINED TWO DAYS, AS HE WISHED TO GIVE SOME REPOSE TO THOSE TROOPS WHO HAD ALREADY ARRIVED SAFELY, AND TO WAIT FOR THOSE WHO HAD FALLEN BEHIND. During this period many of the * The idea of " various places on the road " is not in Polybius, though it is in Mr. Ellis's translation. CHAP. IV.] Ascent. LittU Mont Cenis, 247 horses which had broken loose in their fright, and many of the baggage-animals which had got rid of their burdens, unexpectedly joined them in the camp, having followed appa- rently the tracks of the army. As in our theory it is believed that the summit was reached on the morrow of the conflict at the XevKoirerpov, Mr. EUis, being at war against that notion, offers this criticism (Treatise, p. 48) : — " It is necessary to notice an erroneous interpretation " of a passage in Polybius, from which it has been concluded, " that the battle of the rock took place on the day before " Hannibal reached the summit of the Alps. The Greek " narrative runs thus : ttj S* iiravptov, tcov irdXefxCwv ')(odpLeprj(i is not " excessively steep : " iiniToXv signifies " mostly " — " for the most part." There may be declivity in a line of railroad ; not precipice : it may be /carox^ep?;?, but not KprjixvcohT)^. Mr. Ellis's notion is somewhat akin to that of Livy, for which he is so roughly handled by Niebuhr ; namely, for turning the three half-stades of length into three half-stades of height. Lect. ix. vol. i. p. 173. CHAPTEE II. Hannibal, having completed the passage of the Alps in Fifteen Days, came down holdly into the plain of the Po and the nation of Insubres, c. 66. Karfjpe eh — came down into. Our opponents, unable to say that a man, entering Italy by the route of Susa or of Pinerolo, would come down into the * Cambridge Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology. Vol. ii. p. 327. 300 Polyhius interpreted. [part vit. Insubres, struggle against the words of the history : and first they pretend that Karfjpe et? does not signify " came down into :" they have discovered, that this expression does not import the arrival at an object, but an inchoate movement in the direction of it. M. Larauza challenged the translation of M. De Luc, " entra dans le pays du Insubres/' calling it " une traduction evidem- ment fausse :" and he adds, "Nous nous bornerons a remarquer " que le Grec ne dit nullement qu'Annibal entra dans le pays " des Insubres, mais qu'il se dirigea vers ce pays, et? to tcov " ^laofi^pcov edvo<;" One who could so translate, has very naturally the additional merit of making an imperfect quota- tion. The term Karfjpe ek is applied by Polybius both to the plains and the Insubres. M. Larauza exhibits it as applied to the Insubres only : he may have felt that it would be absurd to assert that Hannibal, who in the previous sentence was said to have reached the plains, "se dirigea vers les plaines :" so he suppressed the plains in expounding the sentence. This was not fair : he should also have contended, " que le Grec ne dit nullement qu'Annibal entra dans les plaines : " but for this his courage failed him. Other critics, since M. Larauza, have tried to misconstrue this simple expression. In the work of 1830 on Hannibal's passage by " A Member of the University of Cambridge," the author objects to the translation " descended into," and says this (p. 77) : " The word Kajfjpe must here, as it frequently " does in Polybius, simply mean ' he marched ;' and the entire " passage must refer to the ulterior and eventful circum- " stance of his bold movement into the plains of the Po, " and his first encampment in front of the Koman army in " the territory of the Insubrians. Should there be any surprise " at the peculiarity of this arrangement of matter, the follow- " ing passage will show that in Polybius it is not unexampled. " In the 35th chapter of the 3d book Hannibal is described as CHAP. II.] Into the Plain and Insuhres. 801 '' crossing the Ebro, and there parting with some of his troops " — rrjv Se XoiTrrjv o-Tparlav avaXa^oDV rjye Sea rcov nvprjvamv " Xeyo/jbii^cov opojv eirl rrjv tov 'PoSavov Bid^aaiv. All the " latter part of the sentence has reference, as in the instance " above, to an ulterior event." This illustration is inadmissil)le, though we shall find it adopted : Karaipco is never so used. The passage cited as ana- logous occurs thus : Polybius, having explained Hannibal's X3roceedings after crossing the Ebro, having told how he dis- charged a portion of the troops, and committed another portion to the command of the general who was to remain in that country, says of Hannibal : " Taking with him the rest " of the army lightly equipped, he led them on through the " Pyrenean mountains for the passage of the river called the " Ehone." Now see the weakness of imagining an analogy between rjye in this place, and Karfjpe in the other. In these words of the 35th chapter the historian, having brought Hannibal across the Ebro, exhibits the scope of a portion of march about to be performed ; and the notice of the passage of the Ehone is the notice of an ulterior event, which will be long after that to which ^76 Scd is applied. "H7€ Bed tells an initial proceeding ; and for that reason it is wholly unlike Karfjpe eh. But the want of prudence in this anonymous critic is equal to his want of discernment : he not only exhibits, as corresponding expressions, those which have no correspondence, but he proves that they have none, by adding these words : " For in the 40th chapter he " is again crossing * the Pyrenees : and in the 41st he arrives " at the passage of the Ehone — ^/ce fiera Swd/jLectyv eirl rrjv " rov'FoBavov BidjSaa-LV." Here his error exposes itself : it is this expression ^/ce eirl, which is analogous to Karfjpe ek, not the words of the 36th chapter. Each of those expressions tells an accomplished fact; one bringing Hannibal to the * iv€\eipeL rats 8t€R:/3o\ats riov livprjvaLoiv opiov. 302 Polyhms mtet^reted. [part vii. Khone, the other bringing him to the plain and the Insubres. Another patron of this false construing is Mr, Ellis. Not that in his published translation he adopted " se dirigea vers " from the French critic, or " he marched to " from the anony- mous of 1830 : he prudently rendered Karfjpe ek " descended into." But two years afterwards, on defending himself in the " Journal of Philology," ii. 329, he condescended deliberately to adopt the error of his Cambridge predecessor, and borrowed his false illustration, saying this : — " The words, Karfipe " Td\fi7]pw<: eh to, irepl tov HaBbv irehla koX to tcdv ^laofx^pwv " €6vo<^, may be compared with 9776 hia tcov Ylvprjvaicov " Xeyofiivcov opwv eirl ttjv tov *Vo8avov KoXovjievov iroTafiov " BtajSaatv, xxxv. 7. Yet Hannibal does not actually pass " the Pyrenees or reach the Ehone till several chapters " further on. Does any one believe that either of these " events occurred twice ? " The answer to this wise question is, No ; the transit of the Pyrenees occurred once, and is told once. The reaching the Ehone occurred once, and is told once : it is not told by the words rjye hiri of chapter 35, when Hannibal had crossed the Ebro, and it is told by the words rJKe iirl of chapter 41. Mr. Ellis must be aware that KUTalpco eh never meant to march or set out for a distant object, and that it always imports " to come to," " to reach," " to arrive at." An old lexicon of Budseus aptly quotes from the 5th book of Polybius, KaTfjpe fieTa tov (ttoXov iravTo^; et? Kopivdov, illustrating the effect of the words with " Hue ubi delati portus intravimus." TO. Trepl TOV HdBov ireBta — the plain of the Po. Some advocates of a Taurine pass are persuaded that the historical statement, that Hannibal came down into the plain of the Po, accords with their theory, because the Turin of Augustus is on the Po. If the town sacked by Hannibal CHAP. II.] Into the Plain and Insuhres. 303 could be traced to that site, which it is not, this expression would not help to place it there. The meaning of ra irepl Tov Ildhov ireBia is too clear to be controverted. Every pass into Italy from the Brenner to the Col di Tende, leads you to the plain of the Po. The words signify, by the express defi- nition of the historian, the great northern plain of Italy, bounded by the Alps, the Apennine, and the Adriatic. When we read that the potentates, Buo-iXlo-koc, who waited upon Hannibal after his passage of the Rhone, had come ck rwv irepl TOV YlaZov TreBltov, we recognise the large application of the term. The irehia, so often named by Polybius, comprised not only Cisalpine Gaiil, but a large portion of Liguria and of the Venetian States, districts quite away from the stream of the great river, whose course divided the plain and gave its de- nomination. Senigaglia is said to be irapa tov \hpLav iirX tS TripaTC KelaOaL twv irepl tov HaZov irehlwv. Polyb. ii. 19, 13. General St. Cyr Nugues limits the scope of this large term to the very banks of the Po itself. Being an advocate for the Mont Gen^vre, he gives as a reason for declining the liue of Susa,, and seeking the Po at a higher point than Turin, the purpose of recruiting his army " sur les bords " before he attacks that place. He says, p. 19 : " Prenons la carte, et " suivons le cours du Po. Ce fleuve, sorti du Mont Viso, " coule du midi au nord jusqu'k Turin. Nous lisons qu' " Annibal fut oblige de faire reposer plusieurs jours son " armee ; qu'il ne put ^viter de prendre la capitale des Taurini. " II est naturel de conclure de l^l qu'il descendit sur les bords " du Po a quelque distance de Turin." A still more curious conception of the plains is that of M. le Comte de Portia D'Urban, whose singular theory will be noticed in Part X. He writes, p. 14 : " Apres avoir franchi " le Tesin, Annibal fut entre daus les plaines du Po : c'est " encore la verity" Many others, among them M. Larauza, when they have occasion to express the idea of the Plain, say "plaines qui bordent le Po ;" or, "plaines qu'arrose 304 Polj/hius ink/rpreted. [part vii. " le P6." For avoiding tlie risk of orror in giving too narrow a construction, it is but to say simply plain, or plains of the Po. The Tnstibrians — to twv 'la-ofi/Spfov e6vo<;. It is well that Poly bins has applied the word of arrival, not only to the plain as the terminus of the march, but also to that nation of the plain, whose friendship and co-operation welcomed the approach of the invaders. He promised in c. 36, that he would make known iroOev opfirjaa^i 'Avv/ySa?, Kol Tlvav (that is, all but the elephants), and encamping on those places, Hannibal sent them away to the pastures : he then set the Numidians, by relays, to the construction of the road. It seems that the account of this obstruction to the march, so related in the history, did not reconcile Dr. Arnold to the * The Oxford Dissertation gives this translation, p. 224 : "when " these were immediately led down to the plains which were free " from snow, and sent to pasture." The freedom from snow is predicated by Polybius, not of the pastures, but of the scene of encampment. CHAP. III.] Time in Descent Snow-line. Salassi. 325 idea of a chasm holding the accumulated snow : and it is true that, however strongly suggested, no Greek word is employed, which represents the particular thing. But is there any other explanation, consistent with the history ? Dr. Arnold for himself gives this statement. Hist. iii. c. 43 : " At last, they came to a place, where an avalanche had " carried away the track altogether for about three hundred " yards, leaving the mountain side a mere wreck of scattered " rocks and snow. To go round was impossible : for the depth " of snow on the heights above rendered it hopeless to scale " them. Nothing therefore was left but to repair the road." According to this statement, no attempt to go round was made ; and, if it had been made, it would have been by scaling the heights above. Now Polybius relates that an attempt was made : he gives a most particular description of the attempt, with the causes of its failure : and it is quite clear to me, that the attempt was made, not by the heights above, which would have been a change from bad to worse, but by the hollow beneath. This was found impracticable, because a thing had happened there, namely, the fresh snow with the last year's snow under it, which was tStov koI TraprfXXar/fiivov ; proper to the spot, and unusual in its degree. This circum- stance is stated as the reason for desisting from the attempt : it could not be tScov, if all surrounding parts had been above the snow-line ; it would then have been the permanent and usual predicament of the mountain. The description, together Avdth the facts, is only intelligible, as of snow abiding in a hollow chasm between mountains. The encampment of the first day, the new encampment of the second day, and every incident of the story is inconsistent with the notion that this mountain was within the limit of perpetual snow ; and com- pels us to see that the old snow of Polybius was precisely that which lingers through the summer in a sunless ravine. Such is the trough of the Baltea torrent at a short distance 826 Polyhms i7iterpreted, [part Vll. below La Tuile : and from time to time, in these our days, the place continues to tell its own tale. Dr. Arnold on the Salassi. The non-resistance of this people contributed to make Dr. Arnold incredulous of the Little St. Bernard. He says, p. 90 : " After the two days' rest the descent began. Hanni- " bal experienced no more open hostility from the barbarians, " only some petty attempts here and there to plunder : a fact " strange in itself, but doubly so, if he was really descending " the valley of the Doria Baltea, through the country of the " Salassi, the most untameable robbers of all the Alpine bar- " barians." In the note M. we read : " The Salassians of that " valley were such untameable robbers, that they once even " plundered Caesar's baggage, and Augustus at last extirpated " them by wholesale. And yet Hannibal on the Italian side '* of the main chain sustains little or no annoyance." Dr. Arnold might safely have credited this freedom from annoy- ance in the Val d'Aosta. Strabo, indeed, reports the plunder of Caesar's baggage ^by the Salassi. This people held out bravely against the domination of Eome. Why should they at any time have been unwilling witnesses of the advance of an enemy to Eome ? Some Gauls on the .outer side, and Inalpine nations whose countiy was invaded, had been hostile to this strange force, having no sympathy with, and not comprehending the object of the expedition. But in the valley of the Doria Hannibal found himself in what may be called the great Gaulish duct into Italy. Mebuhr, speaking from a quotation of Cato by Pliny, classes the Salassi among those who composed the great irruption of Gauls through the Alps ; and supposes them to have re- mained in those mountains and mountain valleys when others advanced through the last barrier onward to the plain.* * Translation. Hare and Thirlwall, ii. 335. CHAP. IV.] Passes between L. St. Bernard and Cents. 327 Why should not the masters of that valley, though fierce and given to plunder as mountaineers, have sympathised with rather than counteracted the designs of their brethren in the plain? Some plunder might be made by indivi- duals ; but all probability is in favour of the Salassi being as a nation friendly to the Carthaginian invasion. The passage of Strabo that we are referred to, telling the last struggle for independence made by their descendants against the tyranny of Augustus, leads us to believe that they would at any time be inclined to the Gaulish confederacies against Eome, and, at the time we speak of, to that which was ripened under the auspices of Hannibal. CHAPTEK IV. On Passes hetween Little St. Bernard and the Cents. i Brockedon. Albanis Beaumont When Dr. Arnold expressed his disbelief of the speed which he understood to belong to the descent as told by Polybius, he was waiting to learn, whether by further ascend- ing the Isere beyond Scez, there might not be found some track through the chain of Alps, not quite so far northward as that of the Little St. Bernard, and by which the march would be shorter from the summit to the plain. In the same note he proceeds to say : " I have often wished to examine " the pass, which goes to the actual head of the Is^re, by " Mont Iseran, and descends by Usseglio,* not exactly on " Turin, but nearly at Chivasso, where the Po, from running * Usseglio here is a mistake : this place is on the Chiara above Viu. 328 Polyhim interp-eted. [part vii. " N. and s., turns to run E. and w." This accords with what he had said in July, 1830 : " The Little St. Bernard is not at the '* source of the Is^re, but some miles below it. If Cramer's " statement fail anywhere, I have always imagined that it " was here, and that the army might possibly have followed *' the Is^re higher up than he imagines, and descended into a " valley which would take them more directly down upon •' Turin. The passes between the Little St. Bernard and Mont " Cenis are almost the only points which I believe have not " been examined." — Stanley s Life, letter 18. That note may have been written long before the history to which it is appended. The curiosity expressed concerning intermediate tracks was reasonable, especially in one who had a distrust of the pretensions of the Little St. Bernard. That curiosity would have been satisfied with information given in Blackwood's Magazine of January, March, April, May, and August, 1836, as " Extracts from the Journals of an Alpine Traveller." That traveller was Mr. Brockedon, one who, as a resolute and persevering explorer of Alpine tracks, had no equal. I heard of his death when I was at Aix in 1854 : and deeply did I, with many, deplore his loss ; he was a man as much respected for his talents and varied attainments, as he was beloved for his amiable and friendly nature. I am not aware that the instruction contained in those extracts is to be found in any of the works published with his name. Many passes over the main chain are there explained, between the Little St. Bernard and the Mont Cenis : and that which is particularly pointed to by Dr. Arnold, as going by the actual head of the Is^re, receives an ample notice, such as, if read, would have erased that pass, the Galese, from the list of possibles, to Dr. Arnold's mind. There are many passes into Piemont, both from the valley of the Isere above Scez, and from the valley of the Arc above Lanslebourg. From the former, there are the Col du Mont, CHAP. IV.] Passes between L, St. Bernard and Cenis. 329 known to Mr. Brockedon, and the Col de Clou, both- caiTying you into the Val Grisanche, down which you come into the Val d'Aosta at Livrogne : the summits of these two passes are at about the level of the snow-line. Higher up the Is^re, you may turn over the Col de Eeme, from whence the Val Eemy takes you into the Val d'Aosta at Villeneuve. Pursuing the Ts^re to his source, and ascending his glacier, you come to a difficult and dangerous pass, by which you arrive at the sources of the Oreo, whose courses will bring you by Courgne to Chivasso. This is called the Galese : Mr. Brockedon knew it well ; that glacier lay before him, when he turned, from La Val to cross the Mont Iseran, which stands on the Savoy side, having at its south-eastern base the early stream of the Arc. On the Piemont side, he was more than once at the same point near the source of the Oreo : on one occasion he returned, and went north from Ponte, walking over the Col de Eeale and the Fenetre de Cogne to Aosta : on another, after surveying Mont Iseran and the surrounding peaks from the crest of the ridge, he proceeded some way down the glacier itself; and returning, not quite to Ceresol, went over the Mont de Nivolet and by the Val Savaranche to Villeneuve. If the summit of that Isbre pass approaches, as we are told, 11,000 feet, and the details of difficulty deserve the credit which I fully give to them, we may rest assured, that the crags of the Galese would fatally arrest the progress of a company of infantry, even with the amplest supplies, and the fullest exemption from human hostility. No armament will ever rest on that backbone of ice. The passes of the main chain from the Arc above Lansle- bourg I believe to be five : of these, the three more southern courses, the Col du Lautaret (called by some L'Autaret), the Col d'Arnas and'tEe Col du Colarin, are mentioned in the Extracts I have spoken of : one higher up I see in the maps as Col d'Insea : and the highest of all, Col Girard, is sane- A 330 Polyhius interpreted. [PART Vii. tioned by the authority of Mr. Brockedon in " Selections from the Diary of a Traveller in the Alps/' given in Fraser's Magazine for February, 1839. The most southerly of all these, in his Journal of January, 1836, before mentioned, - V^#*^' Mr. Brockedon has given an account of as explored by ,,A JX. himself; the Col du Lautaret. Eor reaching this pass, as well as that by the Col d'Arnas (which is far more difficult), 6t V n ^ . you turn from the valley of the Arc at Bessans, a place about half-way between Lanslebourg and Bonreval, which is at the foot of the ascent of Mont Iseran. These two passes send you into one track on the Piemont side, near the sources of the Chiara, which runs by Usseglio and Viu into the Stura above Lanzo. The next track, by the Col du Colarin, also leaves the Arc at Bessans, and carries you over to the source of one chief contribuent to the Stura, and down the valley of Ala to Lanzo. Higher up the Arc, from Vellet according to Eaymond's map, a pass over the Col d'Insea takes you to another source of the Stura, and down the Val Forno to Lanzo. And at the very glacier of the Arc there is a pass, called by Mr. Brockedon Col Girard, which joins the one last mentioned in that same valley at Gros Cavallo. It must be by the Col du Lautaret, the easiest of all these, that a well-known writer, M. Albanis Beaumont, has stated, as his opinion, that the Carthaginians effected the invasion of Italy. In his " Description des Alpes Grecques et Cot- tiennes," iii. 632, giving account of diverging tracks in the Arc valley, and having said, " une branche p^n^troit dans le pays des Centrons," he proceeds thus : " L'autre se dirigeoit " vers Lans-le-Bourg, Lans-le-Yillard, et Bessan ; la elle " commen9oit a s'elever au-dessus de la chaine primitive des " Alpes, qu'elle traversoit et venoit aboutir dans la vallee de " Viu en Pigment, et ensuite k Turin : cette voie, qui n'est " gu^re connue maintenant que par les contrebandiers, m'a " parue, lorsqm je Vai parcouru en 1782, avoir 4td celle GHAP. IV.] Passes between L. St. Bernard and Cents. 331 " qn'avoit dH suivre Annibal ponr pen^trer dans les plaines " de Lombardie. La situation topographique de cette m^me " voie, sa direction, la distance du sominet de cette chaine de " montagnes des vastes plaines de la Lombardie, un peu avant " d'arriver h Eoclie-Melon, semblent venir h I'appui de ma " supposition. Comme aucun historien n'a encore, a ma " connaissance, fait mention de ce passage, il servit h desirer " que ceux qui s'occupent de ces sortes de rechercbes, visitas- " sent cette partie des Alpes, ce qui ne sauroit que tourner a " I'avantage de I'histoire, et jeter des nouvelles lumi^res sur " un sujet qui a occup(^ jusqu'a present plusieurs bommes de " lettres tres distingues." As M. Beaumont tbougbt it so desirable that some one sbould help us to a knowledge of tbis pass, and regretted that nobody had done so, we also may regret that he has said nothing about it himself, beyond the fact that he traversed it. He could not have taught us less if he had stayed at home. The curious thing is, that he should have offered to us both the propositions : 1, that he crossed the pass himself ; 2, that he thought it to be the pass of Hannibal. It is not easy to accept them both. The detailed account which Mr. Brockedon gives of his journey over the Lautaret is most interesting and amusing. For the subject of our speculations, the Carthaginian march, this pass would be about as improbable as that of the Galese : perhaps not quite ; there is a story of its having once been crossed by a patrol of French soldiers ; and we know for certain that it has been traversed by a mule, which is a thing that could hardly happen to the Galese. One who takes interest in Alpine things, will be amply repaid for a careful attention to those pages of Mr. Brockedon which I have mentioned. It is the number for January, 1836, in which you may study the exploit of Garinot, Trag, and the mule, over the crevasse on the Lautaret : let any one tax his 332 PolyUus interpreted. [pakt vii. imagination for bringing upon that scene 30,000 men and a troop of elephants, and weigh well, how far this route may pretend to an improved accordance with the postulates of Polybius. I have taken this opportunity of pointing out the many ways, practised by natives and open to pedestrians over the great Alpine barrier, between the well-known passes of the Little St. Bernard and the Mont Cenis : and what I have adduced rests upon safe authority. These two ways have supplied theories for our question: not so, any which are between them. If Hannibal came up the Is^re to Bourg St. Maurice, he took for his onward course that which alone is known to history. The course over the Graian Alp is the recorded line from the Po to the Is^re in the war against Anthony : it was confirmed by the erection of a military way under the empire : it is commemorated as a way to Lyons by the geographer Strabo : and it is commended by the great historian of the Alps, De Saussure, as the easiest pass of all through the chain of those mountains. From the Mediter- ranean to the Adriatic there is no pass of Alps, where by so short and practicable a mountain line you move from one very fertile valley to another. N.B. Though the Alps only are my proper subject, I hope to be excused, if I shall add, in an appendix, a few comments concerning the first movements made by Hannibal against the Eomans, being the sequel of the great enterprise which we commemorate. For these also are distorted with doubt : and unhappily I am driven to differ from the best friends of our cause. Of the many works written for contesting the question of the Alpine track, there are but two, ia which the line that I follow has been maintained : the work of De Luc and the Oxford Dissertation. In that question our agreement is CHAP. IV.] Passes between L. St. Bernard and Cenis. 333 substantially unbroken. And yet, on the first conflict with a Eoman army, Cramer differs from De Luc ; and I am com- pelled to differ from both. Among the most celebrated men of our times, there is but one, who has positively sanctioned the Passage of Alps which is supported by us ; the renowned Niebuhr. But in the early progress down the plain, I find occasion to dissent from his statements. Thus I shall be tempted to transgress my proper subject : but it will be only so far as the Ticinus and the Trebia. END OF VOL. I. LONDON : R. Ct,AV. BON, AND T AY LOB, PRINTEKS, BREAD STRKET HIU.. M^^^f^:<' i DC CO 1^ o q UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY Do not re move the card frbm this Pocket. 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