Parallela minora

Most people are apt to take the histories of former times for mere forgeries and fables, because of many passages in those relations that seem to be very extravagant. But yet, according to my observation, we have had as strange occurrences of a later date in the Roman times as any we have received from antiquity; for proof whereof, I have here matched several stories of the ancients with modern instances, and cited my authorities.

Datis, an eminent Persian commander, drew out three hundred thousand men to Marathon, a plain of Attica, where he encamped and declared war against the inhabitants. The Athenians made no reckoning at all of so barbarous a rabble, but sent out nine thousand men against him, under the command of Cynaegirus, Polyzelus, Callimachus, and Miltiades. Upon the joining of battle, Polyzelus was struck blind at the sight of a wonderful apparition;

King Asdrubal, having possessed himself of Sicily, proclaimed war against the Romans. Metellus, who was appointed by the Senate to command in chief, overcame him. L. Glauco, a patrician, laid hold of the vessel that Asdrubal was in, and lost both his hands upon it.—Aristides Milesits gives this account in his First Book of the Affairs of Sicily, and Dionysius Siculus had it from him.