[1] After this, Antistius
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gave him five hundred thousand drachmas from the moneys which he was personally taking to Italy, and all Pompey’s soldiers who were still wandering about Thessaly gladly flocked to his standard. He also took from Cinna five hundred horsemen that he was conducting to Dolabella in Asia.
[2] Then sailing to Demetrias, whence great quantities of arms, which the elder Caesar had ordered to be made for his Parthian war, were being conducted to Antony, he took possession of them.
[3] After Hortensius the praetor had delivered up Macedonia to him, and while all the surrounding kings and potentates were uniting on his side, word was brought that Caius, the brother of Antony, had crossed over from Italy and was marching directly to join the forces under Vatinius in Epidamnus and Apollonia.
[4] Wishing, therefore, to anticipate his arrival and capture these forces, Brutus suddenly set out with the forces under him and marched through regions difficult of passage, in snow storms, and far in advance of his provision-train. Accordingly, when he had nearly reached Epidamnus, fatigue and cold gave him the distemper called
boulimia.
[5] This attacks more especially men and beasts toiling through snow;
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whether it is that the vital heat, being wholly shut up within the body by the cold that surrounds and thickens it, consumes its nourishment completely, or that a keen and subtle vapour arising from the melting snow pierces the body and destroys its heat as it issues forth.
[6] For the sweat of the body seems to be produced by its heat, and this is extinguished by the cold which meets it at the surface. But I have discussed this matter more at length elsewhere.
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Brutus. Plutarch. Cambridge, MA. 1918.
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