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682

682 HannihaTs Passage over the Alps. 3. According to Polybius, Hannibal is conducted through the territory of the Allobroges by the barbarians of the Island to the foot of the Alps. He performs this march, a distance of eight hundred stadia, in ten days, during which he kept by the side of the river. On the supposition we are now explaining, as the river is the Isere, there is no necessity for doing any violence to the words Trapa tov Trora/ixov^ where- as De Luc and his followers are forced to suppose a deviation of several hundred stadia from the Rhone between Vienne and Yenne. In the direction of the march, Livy coincides with Polybius, when he makes Hannibal bend his course to the left toward the Tricastini, and then skirt the borders of the Vocontii toward the Tricorii. It is the same road as Bellovesus and his Gauls had formerly taken (Liv. v. 34). The expression, ad Icevam in Tricastinos Jleooit^ must be un- derstood with reference to the previous words, cum jam Alpes peteret : when Hannibal had turned his front toward the Alps, the Tricastini and the Isere lay on his left. We have therefore only to measure the eight hundred stadia along the Isere : they will bring us to Montmeillan, and here on leaving the river we enter the mountains. But if this is the road by which Livy also leads us, how do we come to the Durance ? It is the mention of this river which has subjected Livy to the charge of ignorance and carelessness from those who believed that he led Hannibal across the Mont Genevre, and yet adopted a description from Polybius which is only appli- cable to a different part of the Alps. Uckert thinks that this imputation is unfounded, and that Livy'^s Druentia is not the Durance. He observes that Druentia, like Doria, may have been the name of several Alpine streams, and that the Drac, which Hannibal would have to cross on the road to Montmeillan, answers perfectly to Livy'*s description of the Druentia. After this the road follows the valley of the Arc toward Mont Ceni. It has been urged that the valley of the Isere could alone supply the Carthaginian army with the means of subsistence. To this objection Uckert replies, that the Carthaginians in fact suffered from the want of provisions, (Pol. iii. 60. Aca/cw9 a7rr}WarT6 Trj rwv €7riTrjSei(i)v o-Traret), that according to Livy, (c. 31.), they brought a stock with them, to which Polybius also alludes, (iii. 60.), supplied