[371] Thessalian hat. This was worn principally in travelling. Thessalia was the name given to the eastern part of northern Greece.
[372] Utica. A city on the coast of the province of Africa, north of Tunis.
[373] Nicopolis. A city of Epirus, at the entrance of the Ambracian Gulf, opposite Actium.
[374] Pandataria. An island in the Tyrrhenian sea, opposite to the Gulf of Gaeta.
[375] Sinuessa. A city on the Gulf of Gaeta.
[376] The water-clock (clepsydra) served as a measure of time, especially in affairs connected with the administration of justice. A water-clock usually ran about twenty minutes.
[377] Peponilla, the wife of Julius Sabinus, who had incited an unsuccessful insurrection in Gaul, lived for nine years with her husband in a subterranean cave, always hoping the emperor would pardon the hunted man. But Vespasian was inexorable, and when Julius Sabinus was discovered, condemned not only him, but his faithful wife, to death. See Dio Cass. LXIV, 16. In Tacitus (Hist. IV, 67) she is called Epponina, in Plutarch (Dial. de amicit, 25,) Empona.
[378] Thule (Θούλη) an island in the German ocean, was the moat extreme northern point of the earth known in those days. See Tac. Agr. X., Virg. Geog. I. 30. It it supposed to be what is now called Iceland, or a part of Norway.
[379] A cargo of beasts for the centennial games. A catalogue of animals, dating from the time of Gordian III, (238 to 244 A.D.) mentions thirty-two elephants, ten tigers, sixty tame lions, three hundred tame leopards—but only one rhinoceros.
[380] Live hares. See Mart. Ep. I, 6, (“the captured hare returning often in safety from the kindly tooth”) 14 (“and running at large through the open jaws,”) 22, 104.