Kitap 12
26a
Again, in the same book, Timoleon is exhorting theTimoleon’s victory over the Carthaginians, B.C. 344. Greeks to engage the Carthaginians;Battle of the Crimesus. See Plutarch, Timol. ch. 27. and when they are on the very point of coming to close quarters with the enemy, who are many times superior to them in number, Timaeus represents him as saying, Do not look to the numbers of the foe, but to their cowardice. For though Libya is fully settled and abounds in inhabitants, yet when we wish to express complete desolation we say more desolate than Libya, not meaning to refer to its emptiness, but to the poor spirit of its inhabitants. And after all, who would be afraid of men who, when nature gives hands as the distinctive feature of man among all living creatures, carry them about all their life inside their tunics idle?He refers to the habit of Eastern nations thrusting their hands into long sleeves in the presence of their rulers. See Xenophon, Hellen. 2, 1, 8. And more than all, who wear shirts under their inner tunics, that they may not even when they fall in battle show their nakedness to their enemies? . . .
