De Agricultura

But what man in his senses would not laugh at the other competitions of runners, and candidates for the prize in the pentathlum, to see men studying with all their energies to leap the longest distance, and measuring spaces and distances, and contending with one another in swiftness of foot? men whom, not only those more active animals, an antelope, or a deer, but even the very smallest beasts, such as a dog, or a hare, without making any extraordinary haste, would outrun, though they were to exert themselves with all their speed, and to put themselves out of breath.