Timoleon

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. VI. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1918.

In all this there was much that gave distress, and most of all to the inexperienced; and particularly, as it would seem, the peals of thunder worked harm, and the clatter of the armour smitten by the dashing rain and hail, which made it impossible to hear the commands of the leaders.

Besides, since the Carthaginians were not lightly equipped, but, as I have said, encased in armour, both the mud and the bosoms of their tunics filled with water impeded them,

so that they were unwieldy and ineffective in their fighting, and easily upset by the Greeks, and when they had once fallen it was impossible for them to rise again from the mud with their weapons.

For the Crimesus, having been already greatly swollen by the rains, was forced over its banks by those who were crossing it, and the adjacent plain, into which many glens and ravines opened from the hills, was filled with streams that hurried along no fixed channels, and in these the Carthaginians wallowed about and were hard beset.