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But the great Guardian Spirit of Rome sent a favouring breeze, not for one day, nor at its height for a brief time only, like the Macedonian, nor but a land breeze, like the Spartan, nor but a sea breeze, like the Athenian, nor late to rise, like the Persian, nor quick to cease, like the Carthaginian Carthaginian is an emendating, the mss. having Colophonians (cf. Thucydides, iii. 37). Almost any reasonable guess might serve as well.; but this Spirit, from its first creation, grew in maturity, in might, and in polity together with the City, and remained constant to it on land and on sea, in war and in peace, against foreigners, against Greeks. This it was that dissipated and exhausted in the confines of Italy, like a mountain torrent, Hannibal the Carthaginian, since no fresh aid flowed to him from home because of jealousy and political enmities. This it was that separated and kept apart by great intervals of space and time the armies of the Cimbri and of the Teutons, that Marius Cf. Life of Marius, chap. xv. (414 b). might avail to fight each of them in turn, and that three hundred thousand men of irresistible and invincible arms might not simultaneously invade and overwhelm Italy. Through the agency of this Spirit Antiochus was fully occupied while war was being waged against Philip, Cf. Life of Flamininus, chap. ix. (374 b); it is interesting to find a critical modern historian interpreting these events in almost the same words as Plutarch: see M. Holleaux in the Cambridge Ancient History, vol. viii. p. 225. and Philip had been vanquished and was falling when Antiochus was making his venture; the Sarmatian and Bastarnian wars restrained Mithridates Cf. Appian, Mithridatica, 15. 69. during the time when the Marsian war was blazing up against Rome; suspicion and jealousy kept Tigranes Cf. Life of Lucullus, chap. xxii. (505 f-506 a). from Mithridates while Mithridates was brilliantly successful, but he joined himself to Mithridates only to perish with him in defeat.
