Book IX, 568

Nile, rising in vast volume, thou hast carried away in thy random course the farm of Aristagoras and all his possessions. But the old man himself, abandoning all hope, swam, clinging to a clod of his own land, to his neighbour's half-destroyed farm, saying : “O long toil and useless work of my aged arms, ye are all become water, and this wave so sweet to farmers was the bitterest of floods for Aristagoras.”