Part 12 (1/2)
[Footnote 64: The Romans had an absolute power over their children, of which no age or station of the latter deprived them.]
[Footnote 65: Their business was to interpret dreams, oracles, prodigies, &c., and to foretell whether any action should be fortunate or prejudicial, to particular persons, or to the whole commonwealth. Upon this account, they very often occasioned the displacing of magistrates, the deferring of public a.s.semblies, &c. Kennet's Ron,. Antig. M.]
[Footnote 66: Trajan.]
[Footnote 67: A slave was incapable of property; and, therefore, whatever he acquired became the right of his master. M.]
[Footnote 68: ”Their office was to attend upon the rites of Vests, the chief part of which was the preservation of the holy fire. If this fire happened to go out, it was considered impiety to light it at any common flame, but they made use of the pure and unpolluted rays of the sun for that purpose. There were various other duties besides connected with their office. The chief rules prescribed them were, to vow the strictest chast.i.ty, for the s.p.a.ce of thirty years. After this term was completed, they had liberty to leave the order. If they broke their vow of virginity, they were buried alive in a place allotted to that peculiar use.” Kennet's Antiq. Their reputation for sanct.i.ty was so high that Livy mentions the fact of two of those virgins having violated their vows, as a prodigy that, threatened destruction to the Roman state.
Lib. XXII. C. 57. And Suetonius inform, us that Augiastus had so high an opinion of this religious order, that he consigned the care of his will to the Vestal Virgins. Suet, in vit. Aug. C. XCI. M.]
[Footnote 69: It was usual with Domitian to triumph, not only without a victory, but even after a defeat, M.]
[Footnote 70: Euripides' Hecuba,]
[Footnote 71: The punishment inflicted upon the violators of Vestal chast.i.ty was to be scourged to death. M.]
[Footnote 72: Calpurnia, Pliny's wife.]
[Footnote 73: Gratilla was the wife of Rusticus: Rusticus was put to death by Domitian, and Gratilla banished. It was sufficient crime in the reign of that execrable prince to be even a friend of those who were obnoxious to him. M.]
[Footnote 74: In the original, scrinium, box for holding MSS.]
[Footnote 75: The hippodromus, in its proper signification, was a place, among the Grecians, set apart for horse-racing and other exercises of that kind. But it seems here to be nothing more than a particular walk, to which Pliny perhaps gave that name, from its bearing some resemblance in its form to the public places so called. M.]
[Footnote 76: Now called Frascati, Tivoli, and Palestrina, all of them situated in the Campagna di Roma, and at no great distance from Rome. M.]
[Footnote 77: ”This is said in allusion to the idea of Nemesis supposed to threaten excessive prosperity.” (Church and Brodribb.)]
[Footnote 78: About $15,000.]
[Footnote 79: About $42,000.]
[Footnote 80: None had the right of using family pictures or statues but those whose ancestors or themselves had borne some of the highest dignities.
So that the jus imaginis was much the same thing among the Romans as the right of bearing a coat of arms among us. Ken. Antiq. M.]
[Footnote 81: The Roman physicians used to send their patients in consumptive cases into Egypt, particularly to Alexandria. M.]
[Footnote 82: Frejus, in Provence, the southern part of France. M.]
[Footnote 83: A court of justice erected by Julius Caesar in the forum, and opposite to the basilica Aemilia.]
[Footnote 84: The deceniviri seem to have been magistrates for the administration of justice, subordinate to the praetors, who (to give the English reader a general notion of their office) may be termed lords chief justices, as the judges here mentioned were something in the nature of our juries. M.]
[Footnote 85: About $400.]
[Footnote 86: This silly piece of superst.i.tion seems to have been peculiar to Regulus, and not of any general practice; at least it is a custom of which we find no other mention in antiquity. M.]
[Footnote 87: ”We gather from Martial that the wearing of these was not an unusual practice with fops and dandies.” See Epig. II. 29, in which he ridicules a certain Rufus, and hints that if you were to ”strip off the 'splenia (plasters)' from his face, you would find out that he was a branded runaway slave.” (Church and Brodribb.)]