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Placentia and the Battle of the Trebia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Tenney Frank
Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins University.

Extract

The location of the battle of the Trebia is still a matter of dispute despite the thirty-two discussions of it cited in Kromayer's Antike Schlachtfelder (1912) and several offered since. There is more at stake in the problem than mere curiosity about the place, more even than a desire to appraise rightly the military judgment of Scipio and Hannibal. There is involved the reputation for reliability of Polybius and Livy, faith in whom is severely shaken if we must adopt any of the views hitherto offered.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Tenney Frank 1919. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 202 note 1 Vol. iii, 47 ff.

page 204 note 1 This territory of Placentia was still filled with hostile Gauls, as Polybius says (iii, 67, 8), the reason being that most of the incoming Roman colonists had taken refuge at Mutina because of a recent Gallic raid (Pol. iii, 40, 8). The city walls, however, were already strong enough to serve as a protection for a garrison during the following winter.

page 206 note 1 ‘C. Laelius consul ex Gallia Roman rediit. Is non solum ex facto absente se senatus consulto in supplementum Cremonae et Placentiae colonos scripsit, sed, ut novae coloniae duae in agrum, qui Boiorum fuisset, deducerentur, et rettulit et auctore eo patres censuerunt’: Livy 37, 47. The capture of the Boian lands in 191 is told in Livy 36, 39, 3.