Aemilius Paulus

Furthermore, he ordered the night watchmen to keep watch without their spears, with the idea that they would be more on the alert and would struggle more successfully against sleep, if they were unable to defend themselves against their enemies when they approached.

But his men were annoyed especially by the lack of drinking water, since only a little of it issued forth and collected in pools at the very edge of the sea, and that was bad. Aemilius, therefore, seeing that the lofty and wooded mountain of Olympus lay near, and judging from the greenness of its trees that there were veins of water coursing under ground, dug a number of vents and wells for them along the foot of the mountain.

These were at once filled with streams of pure water, which, under the weight and impulse of the pressure that was upon them, discharged themselves into the vacuum afforded.

And yet some deny that stores of ready water lie hidden away beneath the places from which springs flow, and that they merely come to light or force a passage when they issue forth; they hold rather that the water is generated and comes into existence then and there through the liquefaction of matter,

and that moist vapour is liquefied by density and cold, whenever, that is, it is compressed in the depths of earth and becomes fluid.

For, they argue, just as the breasts of women are not, like vessels, full of ready milk which flows out, but by converting the nourishment that is in them produce milk and strain it out;