Aemilius Paulus

Moreover, they are refuted by the experience of men who dig mines, either for sieges or for metals, and in the depths encounter rivers of water, which are not gradually collected, as must naturally be the case if they come into existence at the instant that the earth is agitated, but pour fourth in a great mass.

And again, when a mountain or rock is smitten asunder, a fierce torrent of water often gushes forth, and then ceases entirely. So much on this head.

Aemilius kept still for several days, and they say that never was there such quiet when armies of such size had come so close together.

But when, as he was trying and considering everything, he learned that there was one passage and one only that still remained unguarded, namely, the one through Perrhaebia past the Pythium and Petra, he conceived more hope from the fact that the place was left unguarded than fear from the roughness and difficulty of it which caused it to be so left, and held a council of war upon the matter.

Among those present at the council, Scipio, surnamed Nasica, a son-in-law of Scipio Africanus, and afterwards of the greatest influence in the senate, was first to offer himself as leader of the enveloping force.

And second, Fabius Maximus, the eldest of the sons of Aemilius, though he was still a young man, eagerly volunteered.

Aemilius, accordingly, delighted, gave them, not as many men as Polybius states,[*](In a lost portion of Book XXIX.) but as many as Nasica himself says they took, in a short letter which he wrote concerning these exploits to one of the kings,

that is, three thousand of his Italians who were not Romans, and his left wing numbering five thousand.