BOOK VII. XX. 83-xxi. 85 



pound weights fastened to his feet, the same weights 

 in his hands and two two-hundred-pound weights on 

 his shoulders.' We also saw a man named Athanatus, 

 who was capable of a miraculous display : he walked 

 across the stage wearing a leaden breast-plate 

 weighing 500 pounds and shod in boots of 500 

 pounds' weight. When the athlete Milo took a 

 firm stand, no one could make him shift his footing, 

 and wlien he was hokling an apple no one couki 

 make him straightcn out a finger. 



Phidippides's" running the 130 miles from Athens 

 to Sparta in two days was a mighty feat, until the 

 Spartan runner Anystis and Alexander the Great's 

 courier Philonides ran the I-IS miles from Sicyon to 

 Ehs in a day. At the present day indeed we are 

 aware that some men can last out 128 miles in the 

 circus, and that recently in the consulship of Fon- 

 teius and Vipstanus a boy of 8 ran 68 miles between 

 noon and evening. The marvellous nature of this 

 feat will only get across to us in full measure if we 

 reflect that Tiberius Nero completed by carriage 

 the longest twenty-four hours' journey on record 

 when hastening to Germany to his brother Drusus 

 who was ill : this measured 182 miles. 



XXI. Keenness of sight has achieved instances Excepiionai 

 transcending beiref in the highest degree. Cicero "''*'• 

 records that a parchment copy of Homer's poem The 

 Jliad was enclosed in a nutshell. He also records a 

 case of a man who could see 123 miles. Marcus Varro 

 also gives this man's name, which was Strabo,* and 

 states that in the Punic wars he was in the habit 

 of tclling from the promontory of Lilybaeum in Sicily 

 the actual number of ships in a fleet that was passing 

 out from the harbour of Carthage. Callicrates 



561 



