ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THE ELKl'HANT OF THE RUSSIANS. 235 



that they were the remains of those brought thither by that general : 

 this is what Steno, the Danish philosopher, has laboured to establish in 



of the Aretini. Lucca, at that period and long after, was a city of Liguria. Fron- 

 tinus calls it in express terms a Ligurian city. — (bk. iii. chap, xi.) " Domitius Cal- 

 vinus besieged Lucca, a Ligurian town." Caesar had Lucca under his command, as Sue- 

 tonius informs us in his twenty-fourth chapter, because that command comprehended 

 Liguria and not Etruria. 



Hence, if we afterwards find in Strabo and Pliny the Magra assigned as the 

 boundary between Etruria and Liguria, we must suppose it was the result of the new 

 division of Italy completed by Augustus. 



Cluvier has) very successfully illustrated these successive boundaries. After this 

 observation, we can understand that as long as Hannibal remained on the right bank 

 of the Arno, above the boundary of the country of the Aretini, he was not yet within 

 Etruria — he advanced towards it ; Etruriam petebat. Now, according to my view of 

 the subject, either he did not pass the Arno at all, and so passed between that river and 

 Arezzo, or else he only passed it at the time he left Fesulse. In either case he left 

 that town, and Flaminius who was posted there, to his left, and proceeded 

 towards Cortona and the lake, by the diagonal of the triangle. Why, it will be 

 asked, did not Flaminius attempt to impede such an advance as this ? For the same 

 reason that he afterwards allowed himself to be enticed into pursuing Hannibal — be- 

 cause he was a bad general. 



But an opinion which was without excuse, because it at once contradicted both 

 common sense and the spurious and corrected texts,- and because it led to the still 

 greater fault of assigning the marshes to Etruria, whatever might be the boundary 

 of that country ; such an opinion owes its origin to Sanleolino and Dini, renewed by 

 Folard, and adopted by Rollin, the latter of whom supposes that the marshes in. 

 question were those of Chinsi, that is to say, those of the Chiana. 



Folard, in particular, presents us with a model of the false reasoning in which a 

 man of talents may be entangled when his premises are unsound. 



How could Hannibal have advanced behind Rimini and Arezzo, so as at once to 

 avoid Serviiius and Flaminius ? Where could he have passed the Apennines so as to 

 strike first upon Clusium ? He must then have passed them in Umbria, and not in 

 Liguria. He must even have traversed the upper valley of the Tiber, from whence 

 it were easy for him to advance upon Rome, without having recourse to so much 

 artifice. But this is not all. Let us admit that he might have gone as far as Clu- 

 sium, why then, finding himself in the rear of Flaminius, instead of going direct to- 

 wards Perugia and Rome, did he return towards Fesulte, passing under Arezzo, and 

 this too again to repass it on his way towards Perugia and the lake ? How can it be 

 said that he traversed the marshes of Clusium in order to reach Etruria, when those 

 marshes are precisely in the centre of what was then Etruria ? There is not a species 

 of improbability or of formal contradiction to the authority of the writers on the 

 subject, which does not meet in this hypothesis. After this, mark the reflections of 

 that military genius upon this masterly march of Hannibal, and on the necessity of 

 his making it ! 



Nevertheless, there are some objections to my system, which require explana- 

 tion. The first is, How did it happen that Hannibal, having advanced from the 

 Magra towards the Arno, did not approach the sea ? and how does Polybius come to 

 say, that it was not till after the battle of Thrasimene, and only at the port of Ha- 

 dria, that he found the means of despatching a ship to Carthage ? 



I fancy that, being eager to come up with Flaminius, having been already retarded 

 by his first attempt at crossing the mountains, and having as yet nothing decisive to 

 announce to his countrymen, he hurried over the route I have specified, without 

 wasting time on possessing himself of a port, or on despatching a ship. 



The second objection is, How did it occur, supposing him to have followed this 

 route, that he was not obliged to take the towns of Lucca and Pisa, or, at least, why 

 the historians do not mention the manner in which he made himself master of them, 

 or how he managed to avoid them. But whatever route he may be made to pursue, 

 a similar objection will present itself in the shape of other towns no less considera- 

 ble. The historians could not mention every thing. We can easily understand that 



