[112] The story of a bashaw of Aleppo is quite similar to that of Sp. Mælius. In a great scarcity he summons the principal men, and makes every one of them state the amount of all the corn which he had in store; then he rides to the magazines, and on admeasurement finds double the quantity of what had been written down from their statements; so he takes away the surplus, and the scarcity is at an end.
[113] Labici, as it is generally spelled in the editions of Livy, is a mistake of a copyist in the fourth or fifth century for Lavici, the reverse of which, Vola instead of Bola, is frequently read in the old editions.
[114] The Etruscan town of Capena was perhaps as near Rome as Veii was, though this cannot be decided, as the town disappeared at an early period. Certain it is that it lay between Veii, Falerii, and the Tiber.
[115] Cf. on the other hand R. H. III. note 1034. I nevertheless did not wish to suppress the passage given in the text from the year 182⁶⁄₇. According to Arago, the winters in Tuscany are now less cold, and the summers less warm than they were in olden times. (Berghaus Länder-und Völkerkunde, I. p. 248.)—Germ. Edit.
[116] This notice is from the lectures of 182⁸⁄₉, and is uniformly given by all the MSS. In the year 182⁶⁄₇, N. said, the length of the emissarius is not measured; it is stated to be one (Italian) mile and a half, 7,500 feet: in R. H. II. p. 570, there are 6,000 feet. Abeken Mittel Italien, p. 179, says:—“The subterraneous drain cuts the south-western banks of the lake to an extent of nearly four thousand feet.” The statement of its length, as given in the text, seems therefore to be founded on a mistake.—Germ. Edit.
[117] See the speech of Fabricius in Dionysius, p. 747. I. 43. Sylb. from the Exc. de Leg.
[118] See R. H. III. note 485. Above p. 45.
[119] The southern mountains in Spain are connected with the African ones.
[120] In Lombardy, the battle fields of 1799 are very difficult to make out since the direction of the roads has been changed. Near Lützen, near Breitenfeld, and near Leuthen, the sites are also very hard to be recognised; even near Prague and Collin, it is not easily done.
[121] A difficult passage in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, refers perhaps to this war. It is stated in it that a heron had risen from the ruins of the city, after its destruction by the barbarians. The latest commentators have, without any just authority, tried to connect this destruction with the war of Hannibal. It might apply to a Samnite campaign, in which Ardea was burnt down; as Strabo, perhaps, would induce us to believe, when asserting, that the Samnites had carried on their conquests as far as Ardea. Yet the Samnites would scarcely have been called barbarians. Most likely there is here an inversion of the tradition which we have just mentioned, that the Ardeates under Camillus had defeated the Gauls.