Hannibal's Route Across The Alps

[M. Porcius Cato]

Although you wouldn't know it from certain hiking tours, Hannibal's route across the alps has been the source of enduring controversy.

 

At least six different routes have been proposed:

Col du Petit Saint Bernard (Niebuhr, Mommsen, Lehmann, Viedebrandt, Kiepert and de Conninck)

Mont Cenis (Napoleon Bonaparte and Nissen)

Col du Clapier (Perrin, Azan, Collins, Wilkinson, and Lancel)

Col du Montgen

[Favonius Cornelius]

You know, I bet a number of these possible routes could be eliminated with some understanding of the status of climate during these ancient times. Was it colder than what we know of today, or warmer? I have a feeling it was colder from what little I know, and so that might eliminate some of the more challanging of the options.

[Andrew Dalby]

You know, I bet a number of these possible routes could be eliminated with some understanding of the status of climate during these ancient times. Was it colder than what we know of today, or warmer? I have a feeling it was colder from what little I know, and so that might eliminate some of the more challanging of the options.

 

We read Livy book 21, which covers this episode, at school when I was 15, and I think this question was what really got me interested in ancient history. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

 

I got Gavin de Beer's book from the library (it must have been fairly new then) and the Loeb text of Livy; I bought the Oxford text of Livy (and one of those texts is deceptive because at a crucial point it fails to record the manuscript reading) and the Loeb of Polybius, and struggled through Polybius's difficult Greek. But it's a long time ago now ...

 

My remaining impression is that the easy passes have to be eliminated because the conditions described by Polybius are too difficult to apply to any of them. Favonius's point is valid, but it's a fact that the Romans later built stone roads across all the easy passes, so they can't have been as difficult as Polybius describes.

 

However, I feel uncertain and there is one point that I would now think about differently. The sources say that the men and elephants were breaking through the new snow and sliding on last year's snow. If that is true it must have been a very high pass indeed. But they had dropped their local guides, hadn't they? -- so how can anyone have known that it was last year's snow? It might have been a heavy snowfall slightly earlier in the season.

 

Apologies if there are mistakes here -- I'm writing from (distant!) memory.

[Cohort]

the great st bernard pass. imho