[2] This number is stated in the Lex. Rhetoricum (Bekker Anecd. I. p. 298). Herodotus (VII. 184.) mentions eighty as the number of the crews of the penteconters. The number given in the text, rests only on one Manuscript of the lectures, but on a very trustworthy one.—Germ. Ed.
[3] One hundred quinqueremes, and twenty quadriremes. R. H. III, note 1053.—Germ. Edit.
[4] The elephants might perhaps have been introduced but a short time before from India, where they were in use from time immemorial: the Carthaginians had not yet employed them against Dionysius and Agathocles.
[5] The legiones urbanæ likewise were only phalangites.
[6] This remark that the story of the horrid death of Regulus originated with the poem of Nævius, was not repeated by Niebuhr in the year 1829, which may perhaps justify the surmise, that he had afterwards abandoned this conjecture; yet it is not to be forgotten, that at that period he treated this point on the whole much more concisely.—Germ. Ed.
[7] Thus the Romans always learned from their enemies; they are also said to have told the Carthaginians in the beginning of the struggle, not to compel them to a war by sea, as they had always learned from their enemies, and then surpassed them.
[8] In some MSS. grandson, which is in contradiction to the Fasti, but seems more appropriate, as 58 years intervene between the consulship of the two.
[9] By this is to be understood that, previous to the fourth decade, the office itself is not yet mentioned at all in our Livy, but from thence, and in the fifth, more frequently. See Sigonius ad Liv. XXXIII. 21, 9.—Germ. Edit.
[10] In Suidas there is a touching story. When Antigonus Gonatas took Athens, which made a stout resistance, and was only compelled by famine to surrender, the old poet Philemon was still living in the Piræeus, whither he had removed, though not perhaps till after the downfall of the city. He was hoary with age, but still a hale old man, and his poetical powers had not yet left him. His last comedy was finished, all but one scene. He lay half dreaming on his couch, when he saw nine maidens in the room before him, who were just going away. Being asked who they were, and why they were leaving, they answered that he might well know them. They were the Muses: turning round towards him, they left him. Then he got up, finished his comedy, and died. Greek literature received its death-blow at the time of the loss of the Piræeus: the spirit may indeed be said to have fled from Greece.
[11] According to Justin, XLIII, extr., Trogus Pompeius was a Vocontian, from south-eastern Gaul. Conf. Niebuhr’s Lectures on Ancient History, p. 9.—Germ. Edit.