s saturated by its close texture and coldness, acting
upon the moist vapours, which when pressed together low down turn into
water. For just as women's breasts are not receptacles full of milk
ready to flow, but change the nutriment which is in them into milk, and
so supply it, so also the cold places which are full of springs have no
water concealed in them, nor any such reservoirs as would be needed to
send out deep rivers from any fixed point, but by their pressure they
convert the air and vapour which is in them into water. At any rate,
those places which are dug over break more into springs and run more
with water, in answer to this treatment of their surface, just as
women's 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 him