[14] This consisted in throwing wine out of a cup into a bowl placed at some distance. The game was played in various ways.
[15] Marcellus was the Roman general in command.
[16] £27,000 in our money, reckoning by weight at five shillings per ounce for silver. This would mean a great deal more in purchasing power, not less than £100,000.
[17] This narrow stripe indicated the knight; the broad stripe indicated the senator. The knights were the capitalists of Rome, farming the revenues of the state, a business becoming yearly more important as the dominions of the republic continued to grow.
[18] This was the ancient aristocracy of Corinth.
[19] The fourth hour, reckoned, i.e., from sunrise. As the time is supposed to be late in the autumn, sunrise would be at 7, and the fourth hour about 10.20, each hour being of fifty minutes duration, i.e. the twelfth part of the hour's day between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. Whatever the length of the day it was divided into twelve hours.
[20] C. Postumius was sent in the year 286 B.C. to deliver to the people of Tarentum the ultimatum of Rome. While he was speaking a buffoon bespattered his toga with some filth. He held up the robe in the sight of the Assembly, with the words, "Verily this shall be washed white".
[21] It ran thus:
"Go tell to Sparta, thou that passest by,
That here obedient to her laws we lie".