Note 13 — Chapter I

That the “fort at the confluence of the Lupias and the Helison,” in Dio, liv. 33, is identical with the oftener mentioned Aliso, and this must be sought on the upper Lippe, is subject to no doubt; and that the Roman winter–camp at the sources of the Lippe (ad caput Lupiae, Velleius, ii. 205), the only one of the kind, so far as we know, on German ground, is to be sought just there, is at least very probable. That the two Roman roads running along the Lippe, and their fortified places of bivouac, led at least as far as the region of Lippstadt, the researches of Hölzermann in particular have shown. The upper Lippe has only one confluent of note, the Alme, and as the village of Elsen lies not far from where the Alme falls into the Lippe, some weight may be here assigned to the similarity of name. To the view, supported among others by Schmidt, which places Aliso at the confluence of the Glenne (and Liese) with the Lippe, the chief objection is that the camp ad caput Lupiae must then have been different from Aliso, and in general this point lies too far from the line of the Weser, while from Elsen the route leads directly through the Dören defile into the Werra valley. Schmidt, who does not adhere to the identification of Aliso and Elsen, remarks generally (Westfälische Zeitschrift für Gesch. und Alterthumskunde, xx. p. 259), that the heights of Weser (not far from Elsen), and generally the left margin of the valley of the Alme, are the centre of a semicircle formed by the mountains in front, and this highlying, dry region, allowing an exact look–out as far as the mountains, which covers the whole country of the Lippe and is itself covered in front by the Alme, is well adapted for the starting–point of a march towards the Weser.