OBSERVATIONS.
IT may seem a cunning trick of Caesar, and perhaps it was his end, to endeavour with fair pretenses to ingage Scipio so far in contri∣ving a Peace, as being Generall of an Army, he might assume unto himself a commanding authority; and thereupon breed such a jea∣lousy, as would keep Pompey and him asunder.
Neverthelesse, it is every way worth a mans labour, to make overtures of peace howsoever: especially considering, how it changeth the re∣lative in the condition of men, which in war is Homo homini Lupus, One man a Woolf to another; and in peace, Homo homini Deus, One man a God to another:* 1.1 and, proving good, will doubtlesse continue; if inconveni∣ent, the sooner broken, and so the case is but the same it was before.
Secondly,* 1.2 we may note, that there is nothing so difficult,* 1.3 but pertinacy and restlesse labour, directed with diligent and intent care, will in the end overcome it. For Caesar, that at the first seemed to undertake impossibilities, going about to besiege a great part of a Country, and to shut up a huge Army in an open place, did neverthelesse (by endeavour) bring them to such extremity of want,* 1.4 that if, as Democritus said, the body should have put the mind in sute, for reparation of losse, which her ambition and wilfull obstinacy had drawn upon it, she should never be able to pay damages.
Touching the Isthmus which Rutilius Ru∣fus went about to fortify, it is a neck of earth, joining an Iland unto the Continent. For as the In-let of the Sea, between two Lands, is cal∣led Porthmus (whereupon the town of Ports∣mouth in Hampshire hath that appellation, as sited upon the like In-let) so any small la••get or neck of earth, lying between two Seas, is called Isthmus. Whereof this of Achaia is of speciall note in Greece; being the same that joined Po∣loponnesus to the Continent, and was of speciall fame for the site of Corinth.
These necks of earth, called Isthmi, are of the nature of those things, as have been often threatned, and yet continue the same. For al∣beit the ambition of great Princes hath sought to alter the fashion of the earth in that behalf, yet I know not how their desires have sorted to no end.* 1.5 Perfodere nav••gabili alveo has an∣gustias tentavere Demetrius Rex, D••ctator Caesar, Caius Princeps, & Domitius Nero, infausto, ut omnium patuit ex••tu, incepto; King Demetrius, Caesar the Dictator, Cai••s the Prince, and Domitius Nero, all of them at∣tempted to draw through this neck of land with a navigable chanell, without any successe, as appears by the issue. In the time of King S••∣sostris, and since, in the Empire of the Otto∣mans, they went about to bring the Red Sea in∣to Nile; but fearing it would be a means to drown the Land, one Sea being lower then a∣nother, they gave over the enterprize. And it may be upon like consideration, or otherwise, fearing to correct the works of Nature, they for∣bare to make a passage between Nombre ac Di∣os and Panama, and so to join one sea to the other, as was said to be intended.