Читать книгу The Best of the World's Classics (All 10 Volumes) - Henry Cabot Lodge - Страница 87

[67] "The most eloquent of all historians," says Cruttwell. Livy understood the spirit of ancient times, making it real to modern minds because he possest "antiquity of soul." In his own day Livy's popularity was almost limitless. Pliny the Younger recalled that a man once traveled to Rome from Cadiz with the express purpose of seeing Livy. Having seen him he returned home at once, caring for nothing else in Rome.

[68] From Book II of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds. "Cocles" was a nick-name meaning the "one-eyed." With this story every school-boy has been made familiar through Macaulay's "Lay," beginning:

"Lars Porsena of Clusium

By the Nine Gods he swore

That the great house of Tarquin

Should suffer wrong no more."

[69] Authorities differ as to the site of this bridge. "Larousse" has a map which identifies it as the site now occupied by the Æmilian bridge, at the base of the Palatine, near the mouth of the Cloaca Maxima; but the "Encyclopædia Britannica," in a map of ancient Rome, places it farther down the Tiber near the center of the base of the Aventine. Murray's "Handbook of Rome" agrees with the "Britannica." This bridge was the first one built at Rome, and is ascribed to King Ancus Martius.

[70] From Book XXI of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds. The identity of the pass through which Hannibal crossed has been the subject of much controversy. A writer in Smith's "Dictionary" says the account in Polybius "will be found, on the whole, to agree best with the supposition that Hannibal crossed by the Little St. Bernard." At the same time, "there are some difficulties" attending this inference.

[71] A tribe living in the upper valley of the Po, near Turin.

[72] From Book XXX of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds.

[73] Adrumetum lay in what is now Tunis and was originally a Phenician city. It was older than Carthage. For many centuries it was a chief seaport for northern Africa. It is now known as Susa.

[74] Hannibal, who when a boy of nine had left Carthage for Spain with his father, Hamilcar Barca, at that time took an oath upon an altar declaring eternal hostility to Rome. In the year of Zama he was forty-five years old.