This man raged against a people unknown and inoffensive, yet able to feel his anger; Cyrus, however, raged against a river. For when, with the purpose of taking Babylon, he was hastening to war — in which the favorable opportunity is of the utmost importance — he attempted to ford the river Gyndes, then in full flood, though such an undertaking is scarcely safe even after the river has felt the heat of summer and is reduced to its smallest volume. There, when one of the white horses which regularly drew the royal chariot was swept away, the king became mightily stirred. And so he swore that he would reduce that river, which was carrying away the retinue of the king, to such proportions that even women could cross it and trample it under foot. To this task, then, he transferred all his preparations for war, and having lingered thereat long enough to cut one hundred and eighty runways across the channel of the river, he distributed its water into three hundred and sixty runnels, which flowing in different directions left the channel dry. And so he sacrificed time, a serious loss in important operations, the enthusiasm of his soldiers, which was crushed by the useless toil, and the opportunity of attacking the enemy unprepared, while he waged against a river the war he had declared against a foe. Such madness — for what else can you call it? — has befallen Romans also. For Gaius Caesar destroyed a very beautiful villa near Herculaneum because his mother had once been imprisoned in it, and by his very act gave publicity to her misfortune; for while the villa stood, we used to sail by unconcerned, but now people ask why it was destroyed.