HANG Newsletter - Royal Institute of Navigation

Royal Institute of Navigation
crossing), this surprising military manoeuvre was both bold and desperate and
has inspired countless readers of ancient history in the intervening millennia.
Because it was undertaken in late fall – which is early winter in these high
Alps – the Pleiades constellation could be easily viewed at a certain recorded
point in the night sky, a journey that would have been daunting even in the
summer became all the more dramatic. As Polybius wrote:
"After a journey of nine days, Hannibal gained the summit pass. He camped
there and stayed for two days to rest the survivors of his army and wait for
stragglers...As it was now almost the time for the setting of the Pleiades, snow
had already settled on the summit...He noticed that his men were in a state of
low morale for all that they had suffered and tried to cheer them up. He
depended on the actual view of Italy, which lies so close under these
mountains that when they are seen together, the Alps stand to Italy in the
same way a citadel does to a city...He restored their spirits by showing them
the plain of the Po..."
Unfortunately, the specific name of the pass Hannibal used was never
mentioned in any sources or presumably by the informant who may never
have known its Celtic name anyway. Some of the Celts aided Hannibal and
his Punic and mercenary army with guides and provisions; others were hostile
and some may have tried to lead him into an Alpine trap, from which he
escaped by clever resources and brave fortitude at some expense of men,
animals and supplies to the surprise of both Celts and Romans.
The Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project has attempted to track Hannibal
since 1994, using near contemporary sources like Polybius (c150 BC) who
claimed his informant’s account was directly compiled from one of Hannibal’s
veterans who would have been very young during the march. Livy used
Polybius and other possible sources nearly two centuries later.
Livy adds some accurate comments about the improbability of some of the
often-suggested northern Hannibal routes such as the Grand-St-Bernard pass
then known as Poeninus. This route would have added far too many days to
Hannibal's journey being so far northward and requiring Hannibal to travel all
the way around Lac Leman (Lake Geneva).
Our Stanford team has hiked over at least 15 Alpine passes, many on multiple
occasions, and compared their present landmark features to the topographic
details given in Polybius and Livy. Allowing for a modicum of some erosional
and geomorphological change, it is still possible to find a few favourable
candidates among the western Alpine passes (now between France and Italy)
and at the same time eliminate many more passes as unsuitable based on the
ancient historians’ narratives.
Naturally, this also rests on several assumptions: that the informants of
Polybius and others were accurate observers and honest in their recollections
and that Hannibal himself was fairly well-informed (when not misinformed by
Celts) and honest with his soldiers when he is reported to have made
geographical statements. The most recent phase of the Stanford Alpine
Archaeology Project's Hannibal route research is published in a new book
Alpine Archaeology (2007).
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