it was considered a very great thing for philippides to run one thousand one hundred and sixty stadia, the distance between athens and laced?mon, in two days, until amystis, the laced?monian courier, and philonides, the courier of alexander the great, ran from sicyon to elis in one day, a distance of thirteen hundred and five stadia.[70] in our own times, too, we are fully aware that there are men in the circus, who are able to keep on running for a distance of one hundred and sixty miles; and that lately, in the consulship of fonteius and vipstanus, there was a child eight years of age, who, between morning and evening, ran a distance of seventy-five 51 miles. we become all the more sensible of these wonderful instances of swiftness, upon reflecting that tiberius nero, when he made all possible haste to reach his brother drusus, who was then sick in germany, reached him in three stages, travelling day and night on the road; the distance of each stage was two hundred miles.

instances of acuteness of sight are to be found stated, which, indeed, exceed all belief. cicero informs us, that the iliad[71] of homer was written on a piece of parchment so small as to be enclosed in a nut-shell. he makes mention also of a man who could distinguish objects at a distance of one hundred and twenty-five miles. marcus varro says, that the name of this man was strabo; and that, during the punic war, from lilyb?um, the promontory of sicily, he was in the habit of seeing the fleet come out of the harbor of carthage, at a distance of over fifty miles, and could even count the number of the vessels. callicrates used to carve ants and other small animals in ivory, so minute in size, that other persons were unable to distinguish their individual parts. myrmecides also was famous in the same line;[72] this man made, of similar material, a chariot drawn by four horses, which a fly could cover with its wings; as well as a ship which might be covered by the wings of a tiny bee.