Book fragments
22
The Celtiberians excel the rest of the world in the construction of their swords; for their point is strong and serviceable, and they can deliver a cut with both edges. Wherefore the Romans abandoned their ancestral swords after the Hannibalian war and adopted those of the Iberians. They adopted, I say, the construction of the swords, but they can by no means imitate the excellence of the steel or the other points in which they are so elaborately finished.See 6, 23. The excellence of Spanish steel has never perhaps been surpassed even to our day.
23
The Roman praetor MarcusSee 35, 2-4. wished to get rid of the war against the Lusitani, and laying aside war altogether, to shirk— as the saying is—the men’s hall for the women’s bower, because of the recent defeat of the praetor by the Lusitani.
23
(103)
23
But those of the Ligurians who fought against Mago were unable to do anything important or great.
24
A mora consisted of nine hundred men.Plutarch, Pelop. 17, who says that other authorities reckoned it at 500 and 700 men. There were originally six morae in the Spartan army. See Xenophon, Rep. Lac. 11, 4; Hell. 6, 4, 12-17.
25
A general needs good sense and boldness; they are the most necessary qualities for dangerous and venturesome undertakings.
26
The second king of Egypt, called Philadelphus, when giving his daughter Berenice in marriage to Antiochus king of Syria, was careful to send her some Nile water, that the young bride might drink no other water.
