The History of Rome. Book III

63. III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the Transalpine Gauls.

64. II. IX. Roman Early History of Rome.

65. II. IX. Registers of Magistrates.

66. Plautus (Mostell. 126) says of parents, that they teach their children litteras, iura, leges; and Plutarch (Cato Mai. 20) testifies to the same effect.

67. II. IX. Philology.

68. Thus in his Epicharmian poems Jupiter is so called, quod iuvat; and Ceres, quod gerit fruges.

69. Rem tene, verba sequentur.

70. II. IX. Languge.

71. See the lines already quoted at III. II. The War on the Coasts of Sicily and Sardinia. The formation of the name poeta from the vulgar Greek poetes - instead of poietes - as epoesen was in use among the Attic potters - is characteristic. We may add that poeta technically denotes only the author of epic or recitative poems, not the composer for the stage, who at this time was styled scriba (III. XIV. Audience; Festus, s. v., p. 333 M.).

72. Even subordinate figures from the legends of Troy and of Herakles niake their appearance, e. g. Talthybius (Stich. 305), Autolycus (Bacch. 275), Parthaon (Men. 745). Moreover the most general outlines must have been known in the case of the Theban and the Argonautic legends, and of the stories of Bellerophon (Bacch. 810), Pentheus (Merc. 467), Procne and Philomela (Rud. 604). Sappho and Phaon (Mil. 1247).

73. 'As to these Greeks', he says to his son Marcus, 'I shall tell at the proper place, what I came to learn regarding them at Athens; and shall show that it is useful to look into their writings, but not to study them thoroughly. They are an utterly corrupt and ungovernable race - believe me, this is true as an oracle; if that people bring hither its culture, it will ruin everything, and most especially if it send hither its physicians. They have conspired to despatch all barbarians by their physicking, but they get themselves paid for it, that people may trust them and that they may the more easily bring us to ruin. They call us also barbarians, and indeed revile us by the still more vulgar name of Opicans. I interdict thee, therefore, from all dealings with the practitioners of the healing art'. Cato in his zeal was not aware that the name of Opicans, which had in Latin an obnoxious meaning, was in Greek quite unobjectionable, and that the Greeks had in the most innocent way come to designate the Italians by that term (I. X. Time of the Greek Immigration).

74. II. IX. Censure of Art.

75. III. II. War between the Romans and Carthaginians and Syracusans.

76. Plautius belongs to this or to the beginning of the following period, for the inscription on his pictures (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 10, 115), being hexametrical, cannot well be older than Ennius, and the bestowal of the citizenship of Ardea must have taken place before the Social War, through which Ardea lost its independence.