Part 13 (1/2)

[Footnote 112: See book V. letter XX.]

[Footnote 113: Trajan.]

[Footnote 114: One of the Bithynians employed to manage the trial. M.]

[Footnote 115: About $28,000.]

[Footnote 116: About $26,000.]

[Footnote 117: There is a kind of witticism in this expression, which will be lost to the mere English reader unless he be informed that the Romans had a privilege, confirmed to them by several laws which pa.s.sed in the earlier ages of the republic, of appealing from the decisions of the magistrates to the general a.s.sembly of the people: and they did so in the form of words which Pomponius here applies to a different purpose.

M.]

[Footnote 118: The priests, as well as other magistrates, exhibited public games to the people when they entered upon their office. M.]

[Footnote 119: A famous lawyer who flourished in the reign of the emperor Claudius: those who followed his opinions were said to be Ca.s.sians, or of the school of Ca.s.sius. M.]

[Footnote 120: A Stoic philosopher and native of Tarsus. He was tutor for some time to Octavius, afterwards Augustus, Caesar.]

[Footnote 121: Balzac very prettily observes: ”Il y a des riviere: qui ne font jamais tact de bien que quand elles se dibordent; de eneme, l'amitie n'a mealleur quo l'exces.” M.]

[Footnote 122: Persons of rank and literature among the Romans retained in their families a domestic whose sole business was to read to them. M.]

[Footnote 123: It was a doctrine maintained by the Stoics that all crimes are equal M.]

[Footnote 124: About $400.]

[Footnote 125: About $600.]

[Footnote 126: About $93.]

[Footnote 127: Horn. II. lib. IX. V. 319.]

[Footnote 128: Those of Nero and Domitian. M.]

[Footnote 129: When Nerva and Trajan received the empire. M.]

[Footnote 130: A slave could acquire no property, and consequently was incapable bylaw of making a will. M.]

[Footnote 131: Now called Amelia, a town in Ombria. M.]

[Footnote 132: Now Laghetto di Ba.s.sano. M.]

[Footnote 133: A province in Anatolia, or Asia Minor. M.]

[Footnote 134: The performers at these gaines were divided into companies, distinguished by the particular colour of their habits; the princ.i.p.al of which were the white, the red, the blue, and the green. Accordingly the spectators favoured one or the other colour, as humour and caprice inclined them. In the reign of Justinian a tumult arose in Constantinople, occasioned merely by a contention among the partisans of these several colours, wherein no less than 30,000 men lost their lives.

M.]

[Footnote 135: Now called Castello di Baia, in Terra di Lavoro. It was the place the Romans chose for their winter retreat; and which they frequented upon account of its warm baths. Sonic few ruins of the beautiful villas that once covered this delightful coast still remain; and nothing can give one a higher idea of the prodigious expense and magnificence of the Romans in their private buildings than the manner in which some of these were situated. It appears from this letter, as well as from several other pa.s.sages in the cla.s.sic writers, that they actually projected into the sea, being erected upon vast piles, sunk for that purpose.]

[Footnote 136: The buskin was a kind of high shoe worn upon the stage by the actors of tragedy, in order to give them a more heroical elevation of stature; as the sock was something between a shoe and stocking, it was appropriated to the comic players. M.]