Part 24

129 (return) [ When Nerva and Trajan received the empire. M.]

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

131 (return) [ Now called Amelia, a town in Ombria. M.]

132 (return) [ Now Laghetto di Bassano. M.]

133 (return) [ A province in Anatolia, or Asia Minor. M.]

134 (return) [ The performers at these games were divided into companies, distinguished by the particular colour of their habits; the principal 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.]

135 (return) [ 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. Some 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 passages in the classic writers, that they actually projected into the sea, being erected upon vast piles, sunk for that purpose.]

136 (return) [ 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.]

137 (return) [ Lyons.]

138 (return) [ He was accused of treason, under pretence that in a dramatic piece which he composed he had, in the characters of Paris and Oenone, reflected upon Domitian for divorcing his wife Domitia. Suet, in Vit. Domit. C. 10. M.]

139 (return) [ Helvidius.]

140 (return) [ Upon the accession of Nerva to the empire, after the death of Domitian. M.]

142 (return) [ Our authors first wife; of whom we have no particular account. After her death, he married his favourite Calpurnia. M.]

143 (return) [ It is very remarkable that, when any senator was asked his opinion in the house, he had the privilege of speaking as long as he pleased upon any other affair before he came to the point in question. Aul. Gell. IV. C. 10. M.]

144 (return) [ Aeneid, LIB. VI. V. 105.]

145 (return) [ Arria and Fannia.]

146 (return) [ The appellation by which the senate was addressed. M.]

147 (return) [ The tribunes were magistrates chosen at first out of the body of the commons, for the defence of their liberties, and to interpose in all grievances offered by their superiors. Their authority extended even to the deliberations of the senate. M.]

148 (return) [ Diomed's speech to Nestor, advising him to retire from the field of battle. Iliad, VIII. 302. Pope. M.]

149 (return) [ Nerva.]

150 (return) [ Domitian; by whom he had been appointed consul elect, though he had not yet entered upon that office. M.]

151 (return) [ These persons were introduced at most of the tables of the great, for the purposes of mirth and gaiety, and constituted an essential part in all polite entertainments among the Romans. It is surprising how soon this great people fell off from their original severity of manners, and were tainted with the stale refinements of foreign luxury. Livy dates the rise of this and other unmanly delicacies from the conquest of Scipio Asiaticus over Antiochus; that is when the Roman name had scarce subsisted above a hundred and threescore years. "Luxuriae peregrinae origio," says he, "exercitu Asiatico in urbem invecta est." This triumphant army caught, it seems, the contagious softness of the people it subdued; and, on its return to Rome, spread an infection among their countrymen, which worked by slow degrees, till it effected their total destruction. Thus did Eastern luxury revenge itself on Roman arms. It may be wondered that Pliny should keep his own temper, and check the indignation of his friends at a scene which was fit only for the dissolute revels of the infamous Trimalchio. But it will not, perhaps, be doing justice to our author to take an estimate of his real sentiments upon this point from the letter before us. Genitor, it seems, was a man of strict, but rather of too austere morals for the free turn of the age: "emendatus et gravis: paulo etiam horridior et durior ut in hac licentia teniporuni" (Ep. III. 1. 3). But as there is a certain seasonable accommodation to the manners of the times, not only extremely Consistent with, but highly conducive to, the interests of virtue, Pliny, probably, may affect a greater latitude than he in general approved, in order to draw off his friend from that stiffness and unyielding disposition which might prejudice those of a gayer turn against him, and consequently lessen the beneficial influence of his virtues upon the world. M.]

152 (return) [ See letter CIII.]

153 (return) [ Iliad, XXI. 387. Pope. M.]

154 (return) [ Iliad, V. 356, speaking of Mars. M.; Iliad, IV. 452. Pope.]

155 (return) [ The design of Pliny in this letter is to justify the figurative expressions he had employed, probably, in same oration, by instances of the same warmth of colouring from those great masters of eloquence, Demosthenes and his rival Aesehines. But the force of the passages which he produces from those orators must necessarily be greatly weakened to a mere modern reader, some of them being only hinted at, as generally well known; and the metaphors in several of the others have either lost much of their original spirit and boldness, by being introduced and received in Common language, or cannot, perhaps, he preserved in an English translation. M.]

156 (return) [ See 1st Philippic.]

157 (return) [ See Demosthenes' speech in defence of Cteisphon.]