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Notes Display Latin text | Translated by Rev. Canon Roberts Book XXI Chapter 38: Hannibal crossed the Alps and reaches Italy[218 BC] | Next chapter Return to index Previous chapter |
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In this manner chiefly they came to Italy in the fifth month (as some authors relate) after leaving New New Carthage, having crossed the Alps in fifteen days. What number of forces Hannibal had when he had passed into Italy is by no means agreed upon by authors. Those who state them at the highest, make mention of a hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse; those who state them at the lowest, of twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse. Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who relates that he was made prisoner by Hannibal, would influence me most as an authority, did he not confound the number by adding the Gauls and Ligurians. Including these, (who, it is more probable, flocked to him afterwards, and so some authors assert,) he says, that eighty thousand foot and ten thousand horse were brought into Italy; and that he had heard from Hannibal himself, that after crossing the Rhone he had lost thirty-six thousand men, and an immense number of horses, and other beasts of burden, among the Taurini, the next nation to the Gauls, as he descended into Italy. As this circumstance is agreed on by all, I am the more surprised that it should be doubtful by what road he crossed the Alps; and that it should commonly be believed that he passed over the Pennine mountain, and that thence [Footnote: from Paenus, Carthaginian.] the name was given to that ridge of the Alps. Coelius says, that he passed over the top of Mount Cremo; both which passes would have brought him, not to the Taurini, but through the Salasian mountaineers to the Libuan Gauls. Neither is it probable that these roads into Gaul were then open, especially once those which, lead to the Pennine mountain would have been unlocked up by nations half German; nor by Hercules (if this argument has weight with any one) do the Veragri, the inhabitants of this ridge, know of the name being given to these mountains from the passage of the Carthaginians, but from the divinity, whom the mountaineers style Penninus, worshipped on the highest summit. Event: Hannibal crosses the Alps |