Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/683

673 HannibaVs Passage over the Alps. 673 Ai'vifia^ CLrjXOevr, he concludes that, as no one maintains that Hannibal crossed either by the Maritime or the Rhsetian Alps, " the object of our search must ultimately be found to coincide either with Mont Genevre or the Little St Bernard/' It mip:ht have been asked : but why not with the Mont Cenis ? De Luc replies that this is out of the question, because no Roman road passed over it. On which Arneth remarks, that by similar reasoning it might be shewn that it probably continues un- trodden to the present day : for why should the ancients have adhered more constantly to the beaten tracks than the moderns? As Charlemagne led his armies across the Mont Cenis, without inquiring about the Roman roads, so the Romans might carry a road over the Little St Bernard, without troubling themselves about Hannibars route. According to Arneth himself Hannibal crossed the Rhone near Pont St Esprit, and with the exception of the distance between Vienne and Yenne, where he took the shortest cut, never quitted the banks of that river till he reached the foot of the Simplon, by which passage he crossed the Alps, and de- scended into the territory of the Insubres near Milan. As this hypothesis diverges from General Melville''s still more widely than any that had preceded it, we are naturally curious to hear the grounds on which it rests. The author conceives that no other can be reconciled either with the circumstances of Hannibal, or with the statements of Polybius : in other words the course it points out was the most natural for Hannibal to take, and answers best to that which Polybius describes. The first of these assertions depends chiefly on a remark which had been made by the author of the Dissertatioii^ but which Arneth thinks he has not consistently pursued to its legitimate consequences. The English writer observes : " the most rational and easy way to penetrate through a very extended chain of mountains is to trace the rivers which flow from them up to their sources, for subsistence and population are gene- rally to be found on their banks, and the road is usually more easy and the ascent more gradual, &c." true! exclaims the German reviewer, but why did not this remark lead the author to follow the course of the Rhone ? Here he conceives is an insurmountable objection to the hypothesis which leads Han- nibal across the Little St Bernard. It assigns no motive that