6
When the Romans were fighting against Pyrrhus of Epeirus, Aemilius Paulus received an oracle that he should be victorious if he would build an altar where he should see a man of the nobles with his chariot swallowed up in an abyss. Three days later Valerius Conatus in a dream saw a vision which commanded him to don his priestly raiment (he was, in fact, an expert augur). When he had led forth his men and slain many of the enemy, he was swallowed up by the earth. Aemilius built an altar, gained a victory, and sent back an hundred and sixty turreted elephants to Rome. The altar delivers oracles at that time of year when Pyrrhus was vanquished. This Critolaüs relates in the third book of his Epeirote History.
7
Pyraechmes, king of the Euboeans, was at war with the Boeotians. Heracles, while still a youth, vanquished him. He tied Pyraechmes to colts, tore his body into two parts, and cast it forth unburied. The place is called Colts of Pyraechmes. It is situated beside the river Heracleius, and it gives forth a sound of neighing when horses drink of it. So in the third book of Concerning Rivers. Quis significetur, quaerere non est operae pretium (Wyttenbach); at any rate not the author of the De Fluviis in Bernardakis, vol. vii.
