1 66 PHYSICAL SCIENCE BK. iv 



20 have under my jurisdiction a province here which 

 both maintained and crushed the armies of the 

 mightiest states, when it was offered as a prize in 

 that colossal war between Carthage and Rome. It 

 saw the strength of four Roman generals, in other 

 words, of the whole empire, massed in one spot ; 

 it raised high the fortunes of Pompey, brought 

 Caesar's to their culmination ; transferred the power 

 of Lepidus to his rivals, and contained the fate of 

 all. Sicily was an eye-witness of that great spectacle 



21 which showed plainly to the world how rapid the 

 descent from highest to lowest could be, and in how 

 many different ways great power might be over- 

 thrown by fortune. For at one and the same time 

 it witnessed the downfall of Pompey and Lepidus 

 from the pinnacle of power in opposite ways ; 

 Pompey had to run from his enemy's army, 

 Lepidus from his own. 



ALTHOUGH Sicily, then, has many wonderful sights 

 in and around it, I will meantime withdraw 

 your mind wholly from your own province, and, 

 passing by all questions relating to it, will direct 

 your thoughts to a far different scene. In your 

 society I will resume the inquiry postponed in my 

 last book, why the Nile overflows in the summer 

 months. Now, let me remark that the philosophers 

 have asserted the similarity of the Danube to the 

 Nile, because its source is unknown and it is 

 larger in summer than in winter. Both statements 

 are clearly false. We know for a fact that the 

 Danube rises in Germany. Again, though the 



