The women talked among themselves and the men, with us putting in a word
now and then, of Palus. They argued a long time as to just what he did in
the fourteenth race and how he had saved himself at the critical moment.
As to his victory in the last race, all three of them were loud in their
praises. Colgius said:
"Nothing like that has ever happened before. The chariot which Palus drove
had the shortest axle I ever saw or anybody else. No other chariot but
that could have passed between the two wrecked chariots; any other would
have crashed its two wheels against the wrecked chariot-bodies and would
have smashed to bits. His chariot was so narrow that its wheels passed
between the two chariot-bodies, clear.
"Even so any other chariot would have stopped dead when its wheels hit the
axles of the stalled chariots, for it was plain that his wheels
interlocked with the wheels of the stalled chariots and hit the axles. But
his chariot had the longest spokes ever seen in Rome, or, I believe,
anywhere else, and so had the tallest wheels ever seen and had its axle
higher above the sand than any other chariot; so its wheels engaged the
stalled axles well below their hub-level and so the team pulled them right
over the axles and on.
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