[409] Annal. lib. i. cap. 65.
[410] Ibid. cap. 69.
[411] Livy, lib. iv. cap. 39.
[412] De Bello Africano, cap. xxi. The exigencies of war sometimes converted the stronger soldiers into the only available transport corps for the sick and wounded. Xenophon speaks in the Anabasis (lib. iii. cap. iv.), of the number of Greeks capable of fighting being diminished, because some soldiers were employed in carrying the wounded, and others in carrying the arms of the latter. One anecdote subsequently told by Xenophon seems to show that, occasionally at least, if not as the common rule, one soldier was deemed capable of carrying a sick or wounded companion. For he informs us, that towards the end of the expedition, when publicly accused of being sometimes too severe to the soldiers during the long retreat of the Greeks, the only person who came forward to substantiate the charge, was a soldier whom he had compelled to carry a sick comrade, and who, it turned out, had subsequently dug a pit to bury the invalid before he was completely dead. The army held that Xenophon had not beaten the complainant so much as he actually deserved for this conduct.—Anabasis, lib. v. cap. 8.
[413] Inscriptiones Regni Neapolitani Latinæ, No. 2701.
[414] Atti e Monumenti de fratelli Arvali, vol. ii. p. 826.
[415] In the fragmentary list of the two old Roman fleets stationed at Misenum and Ravenna, collected from various inscriptions by Mommsen (p. 477), it is not uninteresting to find the ships—sixteen or eighteen centuries ago—bearing names exactly the same as those borne by our modern royal and commercial navies; as The Cupid, The Diana, Mars, Neptune, Ceres, The Fortune (Fortuna), The Victory (Victoria), The Hope (Spes), The Faith (Fides), The Triumph (Triumphus), Providence (Providentia), The Peace (Pax), The Tiber (Tiberis), The Nile (Nilus), etc.
[416] Thus when Cato the younger, after the battle of Thapsus, committed suicide at Utica, by stabbing himself in the abdomen, his friends rushed into his room, on hearing him fall, and among them his attendant physician, Cleanthes, who replaced the uninjured bowels, and began to staunch and sew up the gash. But on recovering from his state of syncope, Cato thrust aside the surgeon, tore asunder the wound, pulled out the entrails, and speedily expired.—(See Plutarch’s Life of him, and Hirtius’ Commentar. De Bell. Africano, cap. 88.) Cicero and Seneca have written applaudingly of Cato’s suicide. Lucan invests him with all godlike virtues; and various modern writers have spoken in enthusiastic terms of his unbending moral dignity and magnanimity of character. But one anecdote, mentioned by Plutarch, seems calculated to detract not a little from our modern estimate of the mental character of this “the last and greatest of the Romans.” In stabbing himself, Cato could not, according to Plutarch, strike sufficiently hard to produce an immediately fatal wound, in consequence of inflammation in his hand, which had required to be dressed by Cleanthes; for a few hours before death, Cato,—that alleged “paragon of Roman virtue,”—had severely injured his fist by striking one of his slaves in the mouth with it.
[417] The death of Pansa, the consul, at the battle of Mutina, in the year B.C. 48, is detailed by Suetonius and Tacitus in such a way as proves that Glycon attended the army as surgeon to Pansa, and took professional care of the consul when he was wounded. In fact, Glycon was thrown into prison, after Pansa’s death, upon a suspicion of having poisoned his wounds.—(See Tacitus' Annal. lib. i. cap. 10; Suetonius’ Octavius, cap. 11.) M. Brutus, in a letter to Cicero, begs the interference of Cicero in favour of Glycon, and pleads his innocence of the deed imputed to him.—(Cicer. ad Brut. 6.)
[418] Kühn’s Edit. of Galen, vol. xiv. pp. 649, 650.