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684 incloses the basin of the Hospice, Hannibal might have pointed out the plains of Piedmont to a part of his troops.

It was not to be expected that Livy should omit the opportunity which his subject supplied, of a rhetorical description of the horrors of the Alps. Accordingly he has painted them ( 32.) in terms which as they are not applicable to the Mont Genevre, which it has been supposed he meant to describe, have subjected him to the reproach of ignorance or inconsistency. Uckert on the other hand observes that it is Polybius who has exaggerated the rigour of the climate at the top of the Alps, and that Livy, more accurately informed, has softened those features in his description which are too highly charged. The former, after mentioning that the elephants had suffered greatly from hunger before the road was opened for them in that part of the descent which detained the army for three days, adds, that the summits and the topmost sides of the Alps are all utterly destitute of wood and herbage because the snow remains upon them constantly both summer and winter. Livy in describing the descent notices the existence of at least a scanty vegetation (c. 36. virgulta ac stirpes circa eminentes—c. 37. nuda fere cacumina sunt, et, si quid est pabuli, obruunt nives). With respect also to the celebrated expedient by which Livy repre- sents Hannibal to have opened a road down the precipice which stopped his march, Uckert vindicates the Roman historian from the charge of gross credulity, which has frequently been brought against him ; by none more confidently, or perhaps with less knowledge of the subject, than the Edinburgh Re- viewer (p. l68), who in general throughout the article seems to have thought it necessary to make up for the want of originality, by the dogmatical tone with which he asserts the opinion he adopts, and the asperity with which he censures those who either contradict it, or involuntarily give evidence against it. The real foundation of the account about the fire and vinegar, is still matter of controversy among competent judges. The Reviewer, who does not seem to know that it was even thought to have had any, has certainly not entitled himself to pronounce that it was "doubtless intended as an embellishment."

Still less is he justified, so far as Livy is concerned, in his