Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/685

675 Hanriihars Passage over the Alps. 6^5 stadia in ten days by the side of the river, and then began the ascent of the Alps (in. 50. 'Awifia^^ ev v/uepai^^ Scku TropevOeh Trapa top iroTafxov el^ OKTaKocriov^ CTacLov^ ijp^aTo ty}^ irpo^ Ta^ 'i^7r649 avafioXrjs. The German critic measures this ten days march from Vienne, where he conceives Hannibal arrived in four days after having crossed the Rhone (Polybius in. 49, says that he came in that time to the Island)^ and he makes it terminate somewhere near Thonon on the lake of Geneva. But unfortunately, satisfied with attempting to shew that on these suppositions the time occupied by the passage of the Simplon would agree with the numbers in Polybius, he has neglected to explain some other difficulties. For instance, it seems extraordinary that Polybius should assign ten days as the duration of HannibaPs march along the Rhone, if at the end of that time he still continued for several days to keep by the side of that river. And it is no less difficult to conceive why any point on the lake of Geneva should have been se- lected as a limit between the first and the last part of this march. If however the historian had wished to mark a dif- ference in the nature of the country, without meaning to imply that the road now quitted the Rhone, one should rather have expected to be brought at the end of the ten days to St Jean Gingoulph, and to find a description of the entrance of the Valais. Polybius (in. 50) contrasts the march along the plain with the ascent of the mountains in a manner which clearly implies that the latter begins at the end of the ten days march. How can his description be adapted to the road be- tween Thonon and Bryg ? Arneth has neglected to answer this question, and though he objects to General Melville's hypothesis, that Polybius does not a second time mention the Isere, by the side of which the road mounts toward the pass of the Little St Bernard, he has not thought it necessary himself to explain the historian's silence as to the lake of Geneva, which, if Hannibal skirted its eastern shore, it would at any rate have been natural to mention, and which, if the ten days march ended there, it was scarcely possible to omit noticmg. Until these difficulties and several others which we need not here point out are removed, this hypothesis will probably gain few adherents: and certainly the objections which the author has raised to some of those which he rejects are not so formidable Vol. II. No. 6. 4R