[113] A ring of great price, which Herod Agrippa gave to his sister Berenice. He was king of the Jews, but tributary to the Romans.
[114] Cornelia was mother to the Gracchi, of the family of the Cornelii, from whence Scipio the African was descended, who triumphed over Hannibal.
[115] He alludes to the known fable of Niobe, in Ovid. Amphion was her husband. Pæan was Apollo; who with his arrows killed her children, because she boasted that she was more fruitful than Latona, Apollo's mother.
[116] He alludes to the white sow in Virgil, who farrowed thirty pigs.
[117] Women then learned Greek, as ours speak French.
[118] All the Romans, even the most inferior, and most infamous sort of them, had the power of making wills.
[119] The Bona Dea, or Good Goddess, at whose feasts no men were to be present.
[120] He alludes to the story of P. Clodius, who, disguised in the habit of a singing woman, went into the house of Cæsar, where the feast of the Good Goddess was celebrated, to find an opportunity with Cæsar's wife, Pompeia.
[121] A famous singing boy.
[122] That such an actor, whom they love, might obtain the prize.