incloses the basin of the Hospice, Hannibal might have pointed out the plains of Piedmont to a part of his troops.
It was not to be expected that Livy should omit the
opportunity which his subject supplied, of a rhetorical description of the horrors of the Alps. Accordingly he has painted
them (xxi. 32.) in terms which as they are not applicable to
the Mont Genevre, which it has been supposed he meant to
describe, have subjected him to the reproach of ignorance or
inconsistency. Uckert on the other hand observes that it is
Polybius who has exaggerated the rigour of the climate at the
top of the Alps, and that Livy, more accurately informed, has
softened those features in his description which are too highly
charged. The former, after mentioning that the elephants had
suffered greatly from hunger before the road was opened for
them in that part of the descent which detained the army for
three days, adds, that the summits and the topmost sides of the
Alps are all utterly destitute of wood and herbage ((
Greek characters)) because the snow remains upon them constantly both summer and winter. Livy in describing the
descent notices the existence of at least a scanty vegetation
(c. 36. virgulta ac stirpes circa eminentes—c. 37. nuda fere
cacumina sunt, et, si quid est pabuli, obruunt nives). With
respect also to the celebrated expedient by which Livy repre-
sents Hannibal to have opened a road down the precipice which
stopped his march, Uckert vindicates the Roman historian
from the charge of gross credulity, which has frequently been
brought against him ; by none more confidently, or perhaps
with less knowledge of the subject, than the Edinburgh Re-
viewer (p. l68), who in general throughout the article seems
to have thought it necessary to make up for the want of originality, by the dogmatical tone with which he asserts the
opinion he adopts, and the asperity with which he censures
those who either contradict it, or involuntarily give evidence
against it. The real foundation of the account about the fire
and vinegar, is still matter of controversy among competent
judges. The Reviewer, who does not seem to know that it
was even thought to have had any, has certainly not entitled
himself to pronounce that it was "doubtless intended as an
embellishment."
Still less is he justified, so far as Livy is concerned, in his
