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685 HannihaVs Passage over the Alps, 685 remark (p. 169), that "the radical error which has infected the speculations of all those who have turned their attention to this question, from the time of Livy to that of Mr Whitaker, appears to have consisted in their first adopting some hypo- thesis as to the shortest and most practicable road from Gaul into Italy, and then betaking themselves to the ancient writers — ^not to ascertain what road they fix upon, or if they differ to decide between them on the best evidence that the case admits of, but — to hunt for authorities in support of the hypo- theses they had determined to maintain.'^"' Whoever else may be liable to this charge, we cannot lay it upon Livy without imputing wilful falsehood to him. He professes to have been governed by the vmanimous authority of all preceding writers, ' who admitted that Hannibal came down into Italy among the Taurini (In Taurinis in Italiam degressum quum inter omnes constet. c. 38), and from this he infers that Hannibal's road cannot have crossed either the great or the little St Bernard, since in each case he would have come down not among the Taurini, but first among the Salassi and then among the Libui. If Strabo has not interposed his own opinion among the words of Polybius, which is a mere suspicion raised by the interest of a hypothesis, Polybius coincided with Livy''s other authors on this point. But it would not follow, as the Edinburgh Re- viewer assumes (p. 171). that he led Hannibal over Mont Genevre, nor, as we have seen, is it certain that this was Livy'^s meaning. Still there is some difficulty in reconciling the statement which Strabo seems to attribute to Polybius, tyiv ^lo. Tavplvcov i^v 'Aj/j///3«9 ^trjXOev^ with his extant words in the passage where, after mentioning that Hannibal had spent fifteen days in crossing the Alps, he adds, that he descended boldly upon the plains near the Po, and among the nation of the Insubres {KaTfjpe ToXfxrjpco^ €l9 to, irepl tov Ylaoov Tre&ia kul to twv la6juj3pcov eOpo^). Uckert supposes Polybius to have been con- siderably mistaken about the course of the Po, to have placed it too far south, and to have assigned the country at the foot of the Alps almost from its sources for a great extent eastward to the Insubres. Through their territories Hannibal had to march into those of the Taurini, who are said to be Tvpos Tf] irapa^peicf. KaroiKovvres, where on his descent from the mountains he en^