This volume contains nineteen of the more important of Frank Walbank's essays on Polybius and is prefaced by a critical discussion of the main aspects of work done on that author. Several of these essays deal with specific historical problems for which Polybius is a major source. Five deal with Polybius as an historian and three with his attitude towards Rome; one of these raises the question of 'treason' in relation to Polybius and Josephus. Finally, two papers discuss Polybius' later fortunes - in England up to the time of John Dryden and in twentieth-century Italy in the work of Gaetano de Sanctis. Several of these essays originally appeared in journals and collections not always easily accessible, and all students of the ancient Mediterranean world will welcome their assembly within a single volume.

Few historical problems have produced more unprofitable discussion than that of Hannibal's pass over the Alps. But if there is still no clear answer, some headway had at least been made in defining the question—which is half the battle. Kahrstedt put the matter as succinctly as anyone. ‘Mit Topographie ist nicht zum Ziele zu kommen, weisse Felsen and tiefe Schluchten, Flusstäler und steile Abhänge gibt es uberall. Das Problem ist literarhistorisch, nicht topographisch.’ Hence a feeling of dismay at finding the question reopened without, apparently, any realization of what sort of question it is. For in fact Sir Gavin de Beer's forthright and attractive little book, despite its ingenious attempt to introduce new kinds of evidence, never comes to grips with the fundamental issue—the relationship between Polybius' account and Livy's. This central question is dismissed with a fatal facility : ‘each account complements and supplies what was missing from the other ‘(p. 33). If one is to get anywhere with this problem one must treat it more seriously than that; and it may therefore perhaps be worth while, yet again, to reconsider the evidence and to indicate the limits within which the answer is to be sought (without any guarantee that it will necessarily be found). Such a survey can offer none of the ‘certainties’ or the excitement to be found in Alps and Elephants; it will propose no novelties; and if it is not to become unreadable, it had better avoid all but the most obvious and necessary references to a fantastically inflated modern literature.

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