[177] Pluribus enim divisus amnis in mare decurrit (Livy, 21, 26).
[178] See on ch. 33, note 2.
[179] This statement has done much to ruin Polybius’s credit as a geographer. It indicates indeed a strangely defective conception of distance; as his idea, of the Rhone flowing always west, does of the general lie of the country.
[180] I have no intention of rediscussing the famous question of the pass by which Hannibal crossed the Alps. The reader will find an admirably clear statement of the various views entertained, and the latest arguments advanced in favour of each, in the notes to Mr. W. T. Arnold’s edition of Dr. Arnold’s History of the Second Punic War, pp. 362-373.
[181] περί τι λευκόπετρον, which, however, perhaps only means “bare rock,” cf. 10, [30]. But see Law’s Alps of Hannibal, vol. i. p. 201 sq.
[182] His life according to one story, was saved by his son, the famous Scipio Africanus (10, [3]); according to another, by a Ligurian slave (Livy, 21, 46).
[183] Livy says “to Mago,” Hannibal’s younger brother (21, [47]). This Hasdrubal is called in ch. 93 “captain of pioneers.”
[184] That is, four legions and their regular contingent of socii. See 6, [19] sqq.
[185] “He crossed the Apennines, not by the ordinary road to Lucca, descending the valley of the Macra, but, as it appears, by a straighter line down the valley of the Auser or Serchio.”—Arnold.
[186] The marshes between the Arno and the Apennines south of Florence.