breasts respond to sucking, for it moistens and softens the vapour; whereas land which is not worked is incapable of producing water, not having the motion by which moisture is obtained.  Those who argue thus have given sceptics the opportunity of saying, that if it be true, there can be no blood in animals, but that it gathers about wounds, and that the flow of blood is produced by the air, or some change which takes place in the flesh.  They are proved to be wrong by those who sink shafts for mines, and meet with rivers in the depths of the earth, which have not collected themselves by degrees, as would be the case if they derived their origin from the sudden movements of the earth, but flow with a full stream.  Also, when mountains and rocks are fissured by a blow, there springs out a gush of water, which afterwards ceases.  But enough of this.

XV.  Aemilius remained quiet for some days, and it is said two such great hosts never were so near together and so quiet.  After exploring and trying every place he discovered that there was still one pass unguarded, that, namely, through Perrhaebae by Pythium and Petra.  He called a council of war to consider this, being himself more hopeful of success that way, as the place was not watched, than alarmed at the precipices on account of which the enemy neglected it.  First of those present, Scipio, surnamed Nasica, son-in-law to Scipio Africanus, afterwards a leading man in the Senate, volunteered to lead the party which was to make this circuitous attack.  And next Fabius Maximus, the eldest of the sons of Aemilius, though still only a youth, rose and spiritedly offered his services.  Aemilius, delighted, placed under their command not so many troops as Polybius says in his history, but so many as Nasica himself tells us that he had, in a letter which he wrote to one of the princes of that region about this affair.  He had three thousand Italians, besides his main body, and five thousand who composed the left wing.  Besides these, Nasica took a hundred and twenty horse, and two hundred of Harpalus’s light troops, Thracians and Cretans mixed.  He began his march along the road towards the sea, and encamped near the temple of Herakles, as though he intended to sail round to the other side of the enemy’s camp, and so surround him:  but when the soldiers had supped, and it was dark, he explained his real plan to his officers, marched all night away from the sea, and halted his men for rest near the temple of Apollo.  At this place Olympus is more than ten furlongs high:  and this is proved by the epigram which the measurer wrote as follows: 

“The height of Olympus’ crest at the temple of Pythian Apollo consists of (measured by the plumb line) ten stades, and besides a hundred feet all but four.  It was Xenagoras, the son of Eumelus, who discovered its height.  King Apollo, hail to thee; be thou propitious to us.”

And yet geometricians say that neither the height of any mountain nor the depth of any sea is above ten stades (furlongs).  However, Xenophanes did not take its altitude conjecturally, but by a proper method with instruments.