[68] Pyrgus is not exactly backgammon. The Romans had a sort of combined dice-box and board—the latter having a kind of tower fixed on the side with interior steps or stops, among which the dice tumbled and twisted before they fell out.
[69] Universitas: but though the context seems tempting, it is too early for "university" as a translation.
[70] I.e. in citizenship.
[71] I.e. in speech.
[72] Why livescentibus I am not sure. "Bruised by the rough mail"? But Lucretius has digiti livescunt: and Sidonius, like other poets of other decadences, is apt to borrow the phrases of his great predecessors.
[73] Sidonius has nearly as much more of this curious story: but the picture of the excitable Celts mobbing their heroes is vivid enough to make a good stopping-place. If things really went as described, one must suppose that a sudden panic came on the Goths, and that they took Ecdicius and his handful of troopers as merely éclaireurs of a sally in force, and drew back to the higher ground to resist it.
[74] His own experience of marriage cannot have made the subject wholly agreeable to him: for he was, it may not be quite impertinent to remind the reader, the first husband of Eleanor of Guienne.