[1072] This statement must have been in some of his lost works.
[1073] Pliny probably here refers to a passage in the Acad. Quæst. B. iv. c. 81, where Cicero speaks of a person who could see objects, it was said, at a distance of 1800 stadia, equal exactly to 125 miles.—B.
[1074] The actual distance between the promontory of Sicily and the nearest part of Carthage is between fifty and sixty miles. The acute vision of Strabo is mentioned by Val. Maximus, B. i. c. 8.—B.
[1075] See also B. xxxvi. c. 4. He was a Lacedæmonian sculptor, who, according to Athenæus, also executed embossed work on vases.
[1076] His works in ivory were said to have been so small, that they could scarcely be seen without placing them on black hair.
[1077] Cicero, Acad. Quæst. B. iv. c. 120, speaks of “one Myrmecides, a maker of minute objects of art;” Ælian, Vac. Hist. B. i. c. 17, also speaks of these minute performances of Myrmecides, and styles them “a waste of time.” Pliny, in a subsequent part of his work, B. xxxi. c. 4, speaks of similar minute works, executed by these artists in marble; but the account which he gives is scarcely credible.—B.
[1078] See B. xxxvi. c. 5.
[1079] It would appear that there is a little confusion here of events. Sybaris, so noted for its luxury and effeminacy, was destroyed by the people of Crotona, under the command of the athlete Milo, B.C. 510. In B.C. 360. the Crotoniats were defeated at the river Sagras, by the Locrians and Rhegians, 10,000 in number, although they are said to have amounted to 130,000. Now it was on the occasion of this latter battle, that, according to Cicero, De Nat. Deor. B. ii., the noise was heard at Olympia, where the games were being celebrated. Be it as it may, the story is clearly fabulous.
Evelyn is much more deserving of credit, where we find him stating in his Diary, that in his garden, at Say’s Court, at Deptford, he heard the guns fired in one of our engagements with the Dutch fleet, at a distance thence of nearly 200 miles.]
[1080] Ajasson discusses at some length, the possibility of the fact here mentioned, and concludes, that it is not to be credited: he estimates the distance between these two places at 120 miles.—B.