village under Cortona to Casa di Piano, the next
stage on the way to Rome, has for the first two or three miles, around
him, but more particularly to the right, that flat land which Hannibal
laid waste in order to induce the Consul Flaminius to move from Arezzo.
On his left, and in front of him, is a ridge of hills bending down
towards the lake of Thrasimene, called by Livy "montes Cortonenses," and
now named the Gualandra. These hills he approaches at Ossaja, a village
which the itineraries pretend to have been so denominated from the bones
found there: but there have been no bones found there, and the battle
was fought on the other side of the hill. From Ossaja the road begins to
rise a little, but does not pass into the roots of the mountains until
the sixty-seventh milestone from Florence. The ascent thence is not
steep but perpetual, and continues for twenty minutes. The lake is soon
seen below on the right, with Borghetto, a round tower, close upon the
water; and the undulating hills partially covered with wood, amongst
which the road winds, sink by degrees into the marshes near to this
tower. Lower than the road, down to the right amidst these woody
hillocks, Hannibal placed his horse,[621] in the jaws of, or rather
above the pass, which was between the lake and the present road, and
most probably close to Borghetto, just under the lowest of the
"tumuli."[622] On a summit to the left, above the road, is an old
circular ruin, which the peasants call "the tower of Hannibal the
Carthaginian." Arrived at the highest point of the road, the traveller
has a partial view of the fatal plain, which opens fully upon him as he
descends the Gualandra. He soon finds himself in a vale enclosed to the
left, and in front and behind him by the Gualandra hills, bending round
in a segment larger than a semicircle, and running down at each end to
the lake, which obliques to the right and forms the chord of this
mountain arc. The position cannot be guessed at from the plains of
Cortona, nor appears to be so completely enclosed unless to one who is
fairly within the hills. It then, indeed, appears "a place made as it
were on purpose for a snare," _locus insidiis natus_. "Borghetto is then
found to stand in a narrow marshy pass close to the hill, and to the
lake, whilst there is no other outlet at the opposite turn of the
mountains than through the little town of Passignano, which is pushed
into the water by the foot of a high rocky accli