Читать книгу The Best of the World's Classics (All 10 Volumes) - Henry Cabot Lodge - Страница 70

[4] From the "Cato Major, an Essay on Old Age." Translated by Cyrus R. Edmonds. This work is composed in the form of a dialog, in which, in the person of Cato the Censor as speaker, the benefits of old age are pointed out.

[5] A famous athlete who was many times crowned at the Pythian and Olympian games.

[6] Cneius Scipio was Consul in 222, and with Marcellus completed the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. He served with his brother Publius Cicero against the Carthaginians in Spain, where, after several victories, both were slain in 212 b.c.

[7] Lucius Metellus, a Roman general who defeated the Carthaginians at Panormus, now Palermo, Sicily, in 250 b.c.

[8] Masinissa, king of a small territory in northern Africa, was at first an ally of Carthage against Rome, but afterward became an ally of Rome against Carthage.

[9] The translator explains that the speeches here referred to, as collected and published by Cato, numbered about 150. Cato was known to his contemporaries as "the Roman Demosthenes." Later writers often referred to him as "Cato the orator."

[10] Archytas was a Greek philosopher, eminent also as statesman, mathematician, and general. He lived about 400 b.c., and is credited with having saved the life of Plato through his influence with Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. He was seven times general of the army of Tarentum and successful in all his campaigns; eminent also for domestic virtues. He is pronounced by a writer in Smith's "Dictionary" to have been "among the very greatest men of antiquity." He was drowned while making a voyage in the Adriatic.

[11] Caudium was a Samnite town near which the Romans were defeated by Pontius Herennius.

[12] Not the Appius Claudius from whom the Appian Way and one of the great aqueducts were named. The older Appius Claudius, here referred to, lived in the century that followed Plato.

[13] Titus Flaminius, general and statesman, was Consul in 198 b.c. It was not Titus, but Caius Flaminius, who built the famous circus and road bearing his name. Caius lived at an earlier period.

[14] Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, the eminent military genius, who several times defeated the Romans before he was finally overthrown by them at Beneventum in 275 b.c.

[15] Livius Andronicus, who lived in Rome about 240 b.c.

[16] A small island (now a peninsula), lying off the coast of Spain. It is to-day called Cadiz, but anciently was known as Erythia, Tartessus, and Gades. It was founded about 1100 b.c., by the Phenicians, of whose western commerce it was the center.

[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.