[299] Campus Martius. The name given to the public pleasure grounds in the north-western part of Rome. Strabo describes them minutely. (V, 3.)
[300] Colonnade of Agrippa. The most renowned object in the Campus Martius was the hundred-columned portico of Vipsanius Agrippa.
[301] Laurel Groves. Within Agrippa’s colonnade were laurel and plane-groves. (Mart. Ep. I, 108, etc.)
[302] Virgil. The author of the Aeneid had always been one of the most popular writers. He was even studied in the schools, as Schiller is in Germany at the present day.
[303] Battle of the frogs and mice. (βατραχομυομαχία) The Battle of the Frogs, a parody upon the Iliad; falsely attributed to Homer, and probably composed by Pigres of Halicarnassus.
[304] Rostra. The name of the orator’s platform, adorned with a ship’s beak (rostrum, the ship’s beak) in the Forum Romanum.
[305] Intends his daughter to marry a consul. Roman women married at a very early age, therefore in the nature of things, parents made the choice for the inexperienced girls. Thus Junius Mauricus requested the younger Pliny, to propose a husband for the daughter of his brother Junius Rusticus Arulenus. (See Book II, p. 55.) Pliny (Ep. I, 14) recommends his friend Minucius Acilianus, and in a quiet, business-like manner enumerates his excellent qualities, among which he does not forget to mention a considerable fortune. To be sure, the daughter’s formal consent was necessary. The young girls of our story, by the way, out of respect for our modern ideas, are described as young girls at an age, when Romans were usually married women. For the ordinary marriageable age, see Friedländer’s detailed description in the appendix to the first part of his “Sittengeschichte,” where he gives a number of inscriptions taken from the tombs, where the age of the girl at the time of her marriage is either directly stated, or may be ascertained by deducting the years of marriage from those of life. Twelve of the wives mentioned, married before they were fourteen, four at fourteen, three at sixteen, one at nineteen, and one at twenty-five. We are, however, expressly told that marriages of girls under twelve were by no means rare.
[306] Varus. The famous victory of the Germans over Quintilius Varus occurred in the year 9, A.D.
[307] Parthians. A people who lived south of the Caspian sea. Their territory afterwards extended to the Euphrates. The Romans had numerous feuds with this nation.
[308] Cantabrian bear. Cantabria, the mountainous region in the north of Spain, supplied most of the bears for the Roman wild-beast combats.