The Alps of Hannibal (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. Polybius knew no Taurinian hyperbasis. The Po of Polybius. Looking at the period when Polybius wrote, one sees no reason that he should have heard of a Pass through those middle Alps, which Livy and Strabo alluded to in later times, one with the term Taurinos saltus, the other by i/irep/Sacri? Sia Tavplviov: and the feebleness of the light which those later writers throw on the Italian descent from those mountains, makes it probable that still less light had shone upon Polybius, who was fully 150 years earlier. Turin was founded by Augustus: and there are now three ready ways of going over the Alps from that place: one which, crossing the plain to Pinerolo, finds the valley of the Clusone, and goes over the Col de Sestriere before it brings you to Cesanue, and the Mont Genevre: one which goes up through Susa to Cesanne and the Mont Genevre: and a third, which, being the same to Susa, strikes northward from thence over the Mont Cenis. The first was probably opened by Pompey; and was used by Caesar sixteen years afterwards: the second was established by Augustus, who made it his approach to the same summit, when he was laying the foundations of his new city Augusta Taurinorum: the third, according to Mr. Ellis, is first named as crossed by Pepin in 755. See the Treatise, p. 159. Why must Polybius, who preceded Pompey by a century, have been acquainted with any pass through these Alps ? He was an enterprising traveller: but this region was not inviting: in matters of art and antiquity it had not the attraction which See Brockcdon's Passes of the Alps, i. p. 15.belonged to other parts of Italy, not the same interest from Greek connection. Strabo, v. 218, says of the Ligurians of the Appennine, that they lived in villages, and that their country...