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Catherine De Medici

by Honoré de Balzac

Pages
about 408
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
7.5 h at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 4.2 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

To Monsieur le Marquis de Pastoret, Member of the Academie des Beaux-Arts.

When we think of the enormous number of volumes that have been published on the question as to where Hannibal crossed the Alps, without our being able to decide to-day whether it was (according to Whittaker and Rivaz) by Lyon, Geneva, the Great Saint-Bernard, and the valley of Aosta; or (according to Letronne, Follard, Saint-Simon and Fortia d’Urbano) by the Isere, Grenoble, Saint-Bonnet, Monte Genevra, Fenestrella, and the Susa passage; or (according to Larauza) by the Mont Cenis and the Susa; or (according to Strabo, Polybius and Lucanus) by the Rhone, Vienne, Yenne, and the Dent du Chat; or (according to some intelligent minds) by Genoa, La Bochetta, and La Scrivia,--an opinion which I share and which Napoleon adopted,--not to speak of the verjuice with which the Alpine rocks have been bespattered by other learned men,--is it surprising, Monsieur le marquis, to see modern history so bemuddled that many important points are still obscure, and the most odious calumnies still rest on names that ought to be respected?

And let me remark, in passing, that Hannibal’s crossing has been made almost problematical by these very elucidations. For instance, Pere Menestrier thinks that the Scoras mentioned by Polybius is the Saona; Letronne, Larauza and Schweighauser think it is the Isere; Cochard, a learned Lyonnais, calls it the Drome, and for all who have eyes to see there are between Scoras and Scrivia great geographical and linguistical resemblances,--to say nothing of the probability, amounting almost to certainty, that the Carthaginian fleet was moored in the Gulf of Spezzia or the roadstead of Genoa.

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