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Encamping in a friendly and allied country, he threw up a palisade and dug a ditch with all care, and to the man who said, ‘What have we to fear ? ’ he replied that the worst words a general could utter were the familiar ‘I never should have thought it.’ 1
1 Cf. Polyaenus, Strategemata, iii. 9. 17. The saying is attributed to Scipio Africanus by Valerius Maximus, vii. 2, and to Fabius by Seneca, De ira, ii. 31. 4. Cicero, De officiis, i. 23 (81) states it as a general maxim.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1931. 3.
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