Translator's Preface
VOLUME VII, containing Books XXVI and XXVII,
covers the years 211 to 207 B.C., thus including as its
principal moments Hannibal at the gates of Rome,
the fall of Capua, the successes of Scipio in Spain,
Fabius 'recovery of Tarentum, Marcellus' inglorious
end in an ambuscade, Hasdrubal's descent into Italy,
his defeat and death at the Metaurus.
Again, as in Vol. VI, the editor is under unlimited
obligations to the Oxford text of Conway and Johnson, Vol. IV, 1934, but indebted in varying degrees
to many earlier editors—a goodly company. All
citations of the Puteanus in the critical notes have
been verified in the well-known facsimile. Beginning
with Book XXVI our textual resources are largely
increased by the store of recorded readings of
another famous MS. which no longer survives, and
these are often to be preferred to those of the
Puteanus. Particular care has been taken to
indicate passages where a gap in
P—whose scribe
yawned all too frequently—is filled from the lost
Spirensis; also where it was the latter who nodded,
while P shows no omission. The capital importance
of this double tradition for books XXVI-XXX has
led the editor, with Conway and Johnson, to stress
the readings of Aldus and Froben, as having had
access to MS. material no longer directly available.
In view of our limited space citation of recent editors
has been necessarily restricted.
To the publishers of the
Cambridge Ancient History
we are grateful for permission to use with alterations
five maps from its Vols. VIII and IX. The map of
Latium and Campania follows in the main that of
Heinrich Kiepert in Vol. X, part 2, of the
C.I.L.
That of New Carthage is drawn in part from an
Admiralty chart, in part from H. H. Scullard's
Scipio
Africanus in the Second Punic War, p. 290, Cambridge,
1930. The latter's map was based chiefly on that
of Canovas in
Estudios geograficos-historicos de Cartagena, 1905, a local work which could not be found in
this country. Used by Scullard, and to be consulted
by the reader, is also the map of J. L. Strachan-
Davidson in his
Selections from Polybius, Oxford, 1888.
The map of Tarentum in Vol. VI has been revised
to show the Appian Way in its latest extension, also
the large area occupied by tombs, but inside the
walls. Adding to space covered by the necropolis the
area occupied by villas and gardens, we find hardly
one-third left for the city proper. Thus Tarentum
resembled Syracuse in having fortified a much larger
area than that required by the city itself (cf. Vol. VI,
p. 505).
