13. As a reason for Hannibal’s going so far inland, Livy says (xxi. 31) that Hannibal did not wish to fight a battle against the Romans till he was actually in Italy, and the further he kept away from the sea, the less was the risk of meeting the enemy. But this is not borne out by what he says just afterwards (xxi. 32) where he is copying from Polybios, iii. 49. 2, 3. He says there that Scipio marched back to his ships on finding that the enemy had quitted their camp at the crossing of the Rhone, re-embarked the army and sent the bulk of it on to Spain, and returned to Italy himself to take command there if Hannibal got through the Alps. The march-back and the embarcation must have been as brisk as the march-up, Polybios using the same term for both, _speudôn_, iii. 45. 4, 49. 4. Hannibal had good information: he soon knew of the arrival of the Roman ships at the mouth of the Rhone--see paragraph 8--and would soon know of their departure; and he would not go 200 miles inland to avoid the enemy if he knew they were not there. 14. In order to reduce the distance, the editors of Livy have tampered with the text, and have printed “Isara” in place of “Arar,” thus changing the Saône into the Isère. They seem to have forgotten Silius Italicus, iii. 442–476. He was almost a contemporary of Livy--born only eight years after Livy’s death--and in his description of Hannibal’s march he not only speaks of the confluence of the Arar and the Rhone, but contrasts the rapidity of the Rhone with the quiet flow of the Arar; and that is just the difference between the Rhone and the Saône at Lyons, a difference remarked by Seneca (LUDUS, 7) and other ancient writers. Silius goes on to speak of the Tricastini and the Vocontii and the river Durance exactly as Livy (xxi. 31) goes on to speak of them, and in almost the same words. It seems clear that Silius had Livy’s words before him when he wrote, and that he found “Arar” there, not “Isara,” and had no doubts about the river being the Saône. That really is decisive for the text of Livy. The only pretext of the editors is that there is a mark like an _s_ between the words _ibi_ and _Arar_ in one of the manuscripts of Livy.