Hannibal's Route over the Alps

Hannibal's Route over the Alps Author(s): G. E. Marindin Source: The Classical Review, Vol. 13, No. 5 (Jun., 1899), pp. 238-249 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/694443 Accessed: 12/01/2010 21:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Classical Review. http://www.jstor.org 238 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. HANNIBAL'S ROUTE OVER THE ALPS. TEE printing of anything more upon this subject seems to me to need explanation. In fact this article, save for a few allusions to the researches of more recent writers, especially those of Dr. Fuchs,1 was written, as it now stands, more than a dozen years ago, for a private society, without any idea of publication. I thought then that Mr. Douglas Freshfield's article, published in the Alpine Joournal of 1883, and accepted by Mr. W. Arnold in his edition of his grand- father's chapters on the Punic wars, had finally settled the question for the main part of the route. But I find now that his really illuminating treatise is apparently ignored by many scholars, and by many subsequent writers on Roman history. Messrs. How and Leigh indeed adopt the right view, but Mr. Shuckburgh retains the old theory, and, still more recently, Mr. Greenidge in his excellent revision of Smith's Smaller History of Rome, published in 1897, supports the old case by arguments which had been entirely overthrown by those of Mr. Freshfield. Lastly Dr Fuchs, who has already written with ability on the military aspects of the Second Punic War, though in a learned and careful treatise on the Pass of Hannibal he arrives at what I believe to be the right conclusion, does not seem to me to grasp the relative importance of the arguments for it, and against other conclusions, or to have dis- covered all of them. It is strange that with all his industrious research he never alludes to MIr. Freshfield's treatise at all. For him ' die Englander ' and ' die englischen Gelehrten,' often referred to, are Cramer and Wickham, who wrote about eighty years ago.2 For all which reasons I think it will be not altogether useless to put forward a statement of the case-indeed I was urged to do so by a friend whose au- thority on Roman history stands very much higher than my own. In studying the question I have been struck by one or two phases of contem- porary writing. One is the unceremonious manner in which any ancient writer (and the same may be said about many ancient MSS.)-any ancient writer who traverses 1 Itannibals zlpeniibergang, von Josef Fuchs, Wien, be C:. Ko,egen, 1897. 2 See also p. 10, 'Seit Mommsen diese in England herrschende Partei in seine mnachtige Patronanz ge- nommen hat ,.' &c. the course selected by the modern essayist is swept aside by the most fanciful argu- ments, as if he were no obstacle at all. Even Thucydides is now told that in his narrative of the sieges of his own time he purposely embroiders. In reading such essays one is reminded of his own phrase ( aycovtKrlxaTa