FOOTNOTES
[115] [The purity of this primitive age has been universally exaggerated. Early Roman virtue was based on poverty and ignorance.]
[116] [Of him Velleius Paterculus[e] says, “For producing the civil war and all the calamities that ensued from it for twenty successive years, there was no one that supplied more flame and excitement than Caius Curio. He was of noble birth, eloquent, intrepid, prodigal alike of his own reputation and fortune and those of others; a man ably wicked and eloquent to the injury of the public, and whose passions and designs no degree of wealth or gratification could satisfy.”]
[117] [Says Florus:[d] “Dishonourable to relate! he that was recently as the head of the senate, the arbiter of peace and war, fled across the sea over which he had once triumphed, in a single vessel that was shattered and almost dismantled.”]
[118] [“Thus the fates hurrying him on, Thessaly was chosen as the theatre for battle, and the destiny of the city, the empire, and the whole of mankind, was committed to the plains of Philippi. Never did fortune behold so many of the forces, or so much of the dignity, of the Roman people collected in one place. More than three hundred thousand men were assembled in the two armies, besides the auxiliary troops of kings and nations. Nor were there ever more manifest signs of some approaching destruction; the escape of victims, swarms of bees settling on the standards, and darkness in the daytime; while the general himself, in a dream by night, heard a clapping of hands in his own theatre at Rome, which rung in his ears like the beating of breasts in sorrow; and he appeared in the morning (an unlucky omen!) clad in black in the centre of the army.”—Florus.[d]]
