Parallela minora

As several great captains were making merry with Polynices, an eagle passing by made a stoop, and carried

up into the air the lance of Amphiaraus, who was one of the company; and then falling down, it stuck in the ground, and was turned into a laurel. The next day, when the armies were in action, the earth opened and swallowed up Amphiaraus with his chariot, in that very place where at present the city Harma stands, so called from that chariot.—This is in Trisimachus’s Third Book of the Foundations of Cities.

When the Romans made war upon Pyrrhus, the king of the Epirots, the oracle promised Aemilius Paulus the victory in case he should erect an altar in that place where he should see an eminent man with his chariot swallowed up into the ground. Some three days after, Valerius Conatus, a man skilled in divining, was commanded in a dream to take the pontifical habit upon him. He did so, and led his men into the battle, where, after a prodigious slaughter of the enemy, the earth opened and swallowed him up. Aemilius built an altar here, obtained a great victory, and sent a hundred and sixty castle-bearing elephants to Rome. This altar delivers oracles about that season of the year in which Pyrrhus was overcome.—Critolaus has this in his Third Book of the History of the Epirots.

Pyraechmes, king of the Euboeans, made war upon Boeotians. Hercules, when he was yet a youth, overcame this king, had him drawn to pieces with horses, and threw away the carcass unburied. The place where this was done is called Pyraechmes’s horses. It lies upon the River Heraclius, and there is heard a neighing whensoever any horse drinks of that river.—This is in the Third Book of Rivers.

Tullus Hostilius, a king of the Romans, waged war against the Albans, whose king’s name was Metius Fufetius; and he many times kept off from fighting. He had the ill luck to be once worsted, upon which the Albans

gave themselves up to drinking and making good cheer, till Tullus fell in upon them when they were in their cups, and tore their king to pieces betwixt two horses.—Alexarchus, in the Fourth Book of his Italian History.