rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_b607acbf-4654-50e4-b5b9-e45bc1302bee">[17] The tyrant of Athens who reigned thirty-three years and died about 527 b.c.
[18] Melmoth has commented on this passage that, altho suicide too generally prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, the wisest philosophers condemned it. "Nothing," he says, "can be more clear and explicit" than the prohibition imposed by Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato.
[19] Better known as the famous Regulus, whose alleged speech to the "Conscript Fathers" has been declaimed by generations of schoolboys.
[20] Lucius Paulus died at the battle of Cannæ, which was precipitated by his colleague Terentius Varro in 260 b.c., 40,000 Romans being killed by the Carthaginians.
[21] Marcellus, a Roman consul, who fought against Hannibal and was killed in an ambuscade.
[22] Cicero's daughter was born about 79 b.c., and thrice married, the last time to Dolabella, who has been described as "one of the most profligate men of a profligate age." She was divorced from Dolabella in 44 b.c., gave birth to a son soon afterward, and died in the same year. Cicero's letter was written in reply to one which he had received from Servius Sulpicius, a celebrated Roman jurist. Cicero intended to erect a temple as a memorial to Tullia, but the death of Cæsar and the unsettled state of public affairs that ensued, and in which Cicero was concerned, prevented him from doing so.
[23] From Book I of the "Offices." Translated by Cyrus R. Edmonds.
[24] Pausanias, a Spartan general, was the son of Clœmbrotus, the king of Sparta, killed at the battle of Leuctra. Pausanias commanded at Platæa; but having conducted a treasonable correspondence with Xerxes, was starved to death as a punishment.
[25] The general who contended against Sulla in the Civil war.
[26] Catulus was consul with Marius in 102 b.c. He acted with Sulla during the Civil war.
[27] Nasica, "a fierce and stiff-necked aristocrat," was of the family of Scipios. When the consuls refused to resort to violence against Tiberius Gracchus, it was he who led the senators forth from their meeting-place against the popular assembly outside, with whom ensued a fight, in which Gracchus was killed by a blow from a club. Nasica left Rome soon after, seeking safety. After spending some time as a wandering exile, he died at Pergamus.
[28] From the Dialogue on "Friendship." Translated by Cyrus E. Edmonds. Lælius, a Roman who was contemporary with the younger Scipio, is made the speaker in the passage here quoted. Lælius, was a son of Caius Lælius, the friend and companion of the elder Scipio, whose actions are so interwoven with those of Scipio that a writer in Smith's "Dictionary" says, "It is difficult to relate them separately." The younger Lælius was intimate with the younger Scipio in a degree almost as remarkable as his father had been with the elder. The younger, immortalized by Cicero's treatise on Friendship, was born about 186 b.c., and was a man of fine culture noted as an orator. His personal worth was so generally esteemed that it survived to Seneca's day. One of Seneca's injunctions to a friend was that he should "live like Lælius."
[29] Scipio Africanus minor by whom Carthage was destroyed in 146 b.c., and Numantia, a town of Spain, was destroyed in 133 b.c. From the letter he obtained the surname of Numantinus.
[30] Magna Græcia was a name given by the ancients to that part of southern Italy which, before the rise of the Roman state, was colonized by Greeks. Its time of greatest splendor was the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.; that is, intermediate between the Homeric age and the Periclean. Among its leading cities were Cumæ, Sybaris, Locri, Regium, Tarentum, Heraclea, and Pæstum. At the last-named place imposing ruins still survive.
[31] Empedocles, philosopher, poet, and historian, who lived et Agrigentum in Sicily, about 490–430 b.c., and wrote a poem on the doctrines of Pythagoras. A legend has survived that he jumped into the crater of Etna, in order that people might conclude, from his complete disappearance, that he was a god. Matthew Arnold's poem on this incident is among his better-known works.
[32] Tarquinius Superbus, seventh and last King of Rome, occupied the throne for twenty-five years, and as a consequence of the rape of Lucretia by his son Sextus was banished about 509 b.c.
JULIUS CÆSAR
Born in 100 b.c.; assassinated in 44; famous as general, statesman, orator, and writer; served in Mitylene in 80; captured by pirates in 76; questor in 68; pontifex maximus in 63; propretor in Spain in 61; member of the First Triumvirate in 60; Consul in 59; defeated the Helvetii in 58; invaded Britain in 55 and 54; crossed the Rhine in 55; crossed the Rubicon and began the Civil war in 49; dictator from 49 to 45; defeated Pompey in 48; reformed the calendar in 46; refused the diadem in 44; assassinated in the senate house in 44.[33]
I
THE BUILDING OF THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE RHINE[34]
Cæsar, for those reasons which I have mentioned, had resolved to cross the Rhine; but to cross by ships he neither deemed to be sufficiently safe nor considered consistent with his own dignity or that of the Roman people. Therefore, altho the greatest difficulty in forming a bridge was presented to him, on account of the breadth, rapidity, and depth of the river, he nevertheless considered that it ought to be attempted by him, or that his army ought not otherwise to be led over. He devised this plan of a bridge: he joined together, at the distance of two feet, two piles, each a foot and half thick, sharpened a little at the lower end, and proportioned in length to the depth of the river.
After he had, by means of engines, sunk these into the river, and fixt them at the bottom, and then driven them in with rammers, not quite perpendicularly, like a stake, but bending forward and sloping, so as to incline in the direction of the current of the river; he also placed two [other piles] opposite to these, at the distance of forty feet lower down, fastened together in the same manner, but directed against the force and current of the river. Both these, moreover, were kept firmly apart by beams two feet thick (the space which the binding of the piles occupied), laid in at their extremities between two braces on each side; and in consequence of these being in different directions and fastened on sides the one opposite to the other, so great was the strength of the work, and such the arrangement of the materials, that in proportion as the greater body of water dashed against the
