insufferable loss, if Mausacas, the thirsty Moor, could have found nothing to drink, or returned to the camp without his supper; not to mention here, what is still more ridiculous, as how “a piper came up to them out of the neighbouring village, and how they made presents to each other, Mausacas giving Malchion a spear, and Malchion presenting Mausacas with a buckle.”  Such are the principal occurrences in the history of the battle of Europus.  One may truly say of such writers that they never saw the roses on the tree, but took care to gather the prickles that grew at the bottom of it.

Another of them, who had never set a foot out of Corinth, or seen Syria or Armenia, begins thus:  “It is better to trust our eyes than our ears; I write, therefore, what I have seen, and not what I have heard;” he saw everything so extremely well that he tells us, “the Parthian dragons (which amongst them signifies no more than a great number, {45} for one dragon brings a thousand) are live serpents of a prodigious size, that breed in Persia, a little above Iberia; that these are lifted up on long poles, and spread terror to a great distance; and that when the battle begins, they let them loose on the enemy.”  Many of our soldiers, he tells us, were devoured by them, and a vast number pressed to death by being locked in their embraces:  this he beheld himself from the top of a high tree, to which he had retired for safety.  Well it was for us that he so prudently determined not to come nigh them; we might otherwise have lost this excellent writer, who with his own brave hand performed such feats in this battle; for he went through many dangers, and was wounded somewhere about Susa, I suppose, in his journey from Cranium to Lerna.  All this he recited to the Corinthians, who very well knew that he had never so much as seen a view of this battle painted on a wall; neither did he know anything of arms, or military machines, the method of disposing troops, or even the proper names of them. {46}

Another famous writer has given an account of everything that passed, from beginning to end, in Armenia, Syria, Mesopotamia, upon the Tigris, and in Media, and all in less than five hundred lines; and when he had done this, tells us, he has written a history.  The title, which is almost as long as the work, runs thus:  “A narrative of everything done by the Romans in Armenia, Media, and Mesopotamia, by Antiochianus, who gained a prize in the sacred games of Apollo.”  I suppose, when he was a boy, he had conquered in a running match.

I have heard of another likewise, who wrote a history of what was to happen hereafter, {47} and describes the taking of Vologesus prisoner, the murder of Osroes, and how he was to be given to a lion; and above all, our own much-to-be-wished-for triumph, as things that must come to pass.  Thus prophesying away, he soon got to the end of the story.  He has built, moreover, a new city in Mesopotamia, most magnificently