680 Han7iibaVs Passage over the Alps. description in Zonaras (viii. 23.), implies that some islands were near. 2. The Island. From the place where he passed the Rhone, Hannibal marched in four days to the Island. Livy explains the direction he thus took by his wish to avoid the enemy. Polybius does not seem to be aware that it was a circuitous route : this Uckert ascribes to his incorrect con- ception of the course of the Rhone. The real motive he supposes to have been the wish to avoid the territories of hostile Ligurian tribes : the road was the same which the Celtic envoys had taken for the same reason. With respect to the position of the Island^ Uckert admits it to be the tract which is bounded by the Rhone, the Isere, and the intervening mountains ; but on almost every other point he is completely at variance with the partisans of General Melville. He does not allow that any alteration is required in the text either of Polybius or Livy where they describe the Island. As to the former, the assertion which the Edinburgh Reviewer (p. 182.) repeats after De Luc: that General Melville read 'ladpa^ for S/cct^a? or '^Kcopa^ in a Vatican MS. of Polybius, has been contradicted by Maio, who assured Laranza that he had examined all the manuscripts of Polybius in that library, and had found no such reading. Uckert thinks the change unnecessary, because he believes that Polybius did not know the true name of the Isere, and that he mistook it for the Rhone, and applied the name of Scaras or Scoras to the real Rhone. Neither Livy nor Polybius requires us to suppose that Hannibal entered the Island: at least with his whole army : he might have settled the dispute between the brothers which was referred to his arbitra- tion, (Liv. XXI. 31. Hujus seditionis disceptatio quum ad Hannibalem rejecta esset, arbiter regni fact us, quod ea senatus principum que sententia fuerat, imperium majori restituit), either by his authority, or by sending a small detachment of his army. (His personal presence certainly seems to be implied by the words of Polybius, iit. 49. avveirideiixevo^^ kol avveK(ia(jov tov erepou.} Hence it is not necessary to infer from the expression rjKe ttjOos t}]v ^rjaou (ibid.), that in this four days march the Carthaginian army even reached the banks of the Isere: and consequently the six hundred stadia.
