THE ALPS OF HANNIBAL.
PART 1. THE CONTROVERSY.
CHAPTER I.
The Controversy: Progress and State of it.
Seven cities contended to be the birtli-place of Homer. As many mountains contend to be the Alps of Hannibal. Great and good men have toiled to fix the death-hour of Alexander, and the landing-spot of Caesar in Britain. There are who hold such labours to be vain and unprofitable : and it is true that, in the variety of objects which provoke curiosity and research, the interest which they excite is not regulated by their importance. But the value of the thing pursued is alone not a test of the merit of the pursuit: the scrutiny of a question which it hardly imports us to solve may nevertheless be deserving of praise: an examination of evidence, as in the case before us, can vindicate an interest far surpassing that of the thing to be proved; and it is enough to say, that a subject which has engaged Letronne and Ukert and Arnold, bespeaks itself worthy to be explored. When we regard the various matters which such inquiries will embrace, we make better estimate of their value ; and see danger in a doctrine which, condenming them as useless, would confine our exercise of
thinking to the exigencies of the passing day. Efforts of retrospect, even such as these, are conducive to the interests of society.
But in our subject is there need of effort? Eemains there a question to discuss ? Has not error been removed; and the evidence of truth been submitted to and confessed ? There is no such acquiescence. The lamented Arnold, whose loss we cease not to deplore, studied the subject among the Alps themselves: in 1825 he was on the spot with Polybius in hand; in 1835 he wrote, "I have been working at Hannibal's passage of the Alps :" zealous in the tracing of military movements, he hardly reached a firm opinion on this subject, and to the last declared Polybius an unintelligible guide. Letronne and Ukert are among the later lights on geography and history; one invites us to the Gen^vre, the other to the Cenis : while Arneth, director of the Museum at Vienna, has taught that the Carthaginians descended from the Simplon. So late as 1851, a savant of Savoy discovered their track through the Allee Blanche, hailing Mont Blanc as the XevKOTrerpov ; and Mr. Ellis in 1854 proclaims the Kock of Baune as the representative of that landmark, and the little Mont Cenis as laid down in the Chart of Pentinger. So long as there are such doubts and such difficulties among learned men, the question is not closed; truth is not established; search is still reasonable: nee modus est ullus investigandi veri, nisi inveneris.
Progress and State of the Controversy.
More than eighteen hundred years ago, Livy brought forward the course of Hannibal as a matter of controversy: and it is controverted to this day. In our own times books and pamphlets innumerable have been written upon it, exhibiting various degrees of labour and merit. The subject indeed has been agitated from time to time for the last three
hundred years, in works which the cunous who have leisure may explore. A considerable list is given with Dr. Ukert's Dissertation, in his second volume, Part IT. p. 563 ; and many are enumerated in a preface to the work of M. le Comte de Fortia d'Urban, 1821.
The earliest of modern authors, whose opinion I can quote, is Mr. Breval, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his Travels, published 1726, he named the Little St. Bernard as the Pass of Hannibal. But, though he saw some essential points correctly, his suffrage is of no value; for, referring to Polybius, he says that Hannibal passed the Phone at Lyons. Then, doubting whether the site of that city between the Saone and the Phone could represent the district called the Island, he finds relief in the work of Menetrier, the historian of Lyons, whose antiquarian researches had brought him acquainted with an old canal cut from one river to the other —which, says Mr. Breval, " makes the third side
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