37.
At last, when men and beasts had been worn out to no avail, they encamped upon the ridge, [p. 109]after having, with the utmost difficulty, cleared1 enough ground even for this purpose, so much snow were they obliged to dig out and remove.
[2]
The soldiers were then set to work to construct a road across the cliff-their only possible way. Since they had to cut through the rock, they felled some huge trees that grew near at hand, and lopping off their branches, made an enormous pile of logs. This they set on fire, as soon as the wind blew fresh enough to make it burn, and pouring vinegar over the glowing rocks, caused them to crumble.
[3]
After thus heating the crag with fire, they opened a way in it with iron tools, and relieved the steepness of the slope with zigzags of an easy gradient, so that not only the baggage animals but even the elephants could be led down.2
[4]
Four days were consumed at the cliff, and the animals nearly perished of starvation; for the mountain tops are all practically bare, and such grass as does grow is buried under snow.3
[5]
Lower down one comes to valleys and sunny slopes and rivulets, and near them woods, and places that begin to be fitter for man's habitation.
[6]
There the beasts were turned out to graze, and the men, exhausted with toiling at the road, were allowed to rest. Thence they descended in three days' time [p. 111]into the plain, through a region now that was less4 forbidding, as was the character of its inhabitants.
1 B.C. 218
2 This famous story has provoked much ridicule, but in Livy's defence may be noted, (1) the well-known disintegrating effect on certain kinds of stone of heat followed by a douche of cold water; (2) the belief entertained in ancient times, and as late as the sixteenth century, that vinegar helped to make stones friable; (3) the likelihood that Hannibal had at least a few skins of sour wine in his baggage-train (some have held that a vast quantity would have been required, but it must be remembered that Livy may have conceived of the width of the landslip as only a few rods; see last note). In any case those who regard the vinegar story as fiction must not fasten the fiction on Livy, if, as I think, we may discern an allusion to it in Varro's Menippean Satires (Sesculixes, frag. 25, p. 237, of the Buecheler-Heraeus edition: alteram viam deformasse Carneaden virtutis e cupis acris aceti), and it was probably an old and popular tradition long before the time of Varro, who died in 27 B.C. For recent discussion of the story see the article by Evan T. Sage in C. W. 16 (1922-1923) 73-76, and notes of modern instances by other contributors to the same volume.
3 Polybius (III. Iv. 7) says that the pack-animals and horses were sent over the road after one day's work had been done, and turned out to pasture, but that three days were employed in making it sufficiently wide for the elephants.
4 B.C. 218
Livy. Boooks XXI-XXII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1929: no copyright notice.
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