ing through a hostile territory
an army ought to march in the order best adapted to deliver battle with
effect should need arise? [5]--a golden rule which, punctually obeyed
by some, is disobeyed by others. Again, as all the world knows, it is
better to place day and night pickets [6] in front of an encampment. Yet
even that is a procedure which, carefully observed at times, is at times
as carelessly neglected. Once more: not one man in ten thousand, [7]
I suppose, but knows that when a force is marching through a narrow
defile, the safer method is to occupy beforehand certain points of
vantage. [8] Yet this precaution also has been known to be neglected.

[5] See Thuc. ii. 81: "The Hellenic troops maintained order on the
march and kept a look-out until..."--Jowett.

[6] See "Cyrop." I. vi. 43.

[7] Lit. "it would be hard to find the man who did not know."

[8] Or, "to seize advantageous positions in advance." Cf. "Hiero," x.
5.

Similarly, every one will tell you that manure is the best thing in
the world for agriculture, and every one can see how naturally it is
produced. Still, though the method of production is accurately known,
though there is every facility to get it in abundance, the fact remains
that, while one man takes pains to have manure collected, another is
entirely neglectful. And yet God sends us rain from heaven, and every
hollow place becomes a standing pool, while earth supplies materials of
every kind; the sower, too, about to sow must cleanse the soil, and what
he takes as refuse from it needs only to be thrown into water and time
itself will do the rest, shaping all to gladden earth. [9] For matter
in every shape, nay earth itself, [10] in stagnant water turns to fine
manure.

[9] Lit. "Time itself will make that wherein Earth rejoices."

[10] i.e. "each fallen leaf, each sprig or spray of undergrowth, the
very weeds, each clod." Lit. "what kind of material, what kind of
soil does not become manure when thrown into stagnant water?"

So, again, as touching the various ways in which the earth itself needs
treatment, either as being too moist for sowing, or too salt [11] for
planting, these and the processes of cure are known to all men: how
in one case the superfluous water is drawn off by trenches, and in the
other the salt corrected by being mixed with various non-salt bodies,
moist or dry. Yet here again, in spite of knowledge, some are careful of
these matters, othe