[133] A famous astrologer; an Egyptian.
[134] The Brachmans are Indian philosophers, who remain to this day; and hold, after Pythagoras, the translation of souls from one body to another.
[135] Juvenal's meaning is, help her to any kind of slops which may cause her to miscarry, for fear she may be brought to bed of a black Moor, which thou, being her husband, art bound to father; and that bastard may, by law, inherit thy estate.
[136] The Romans thought it ominous to see a black Moor in the morning, if he were the first man they met.
[137] Cæsonia, wife to Caius Caligula, the great tyrant. It is said she gave him a love-potion, which, flying up into his head, distracted him, and was the occasion of his committing so many acts of cruelty.
[138] The hippomanes, a fleshy excrescence, which the ancients supposed grew in the forehead of a foal, and which the mare bites off when it is born. It was supposed to be a sovereign ingredient in philtres. Editor.
[139] Agrippina was the mother of the tyrant Nero, who poisoned her husband Claudius, that Nero might succeed, who was her son, and not Britannicus, who was the son of Claudius, by a former wife.
[140] The widow of Drymon poisoned her sons, that she might succeed to their estate: This was done in the poet's time, or just before it.
[141] The Belides were fifty sisters, married to fifty young men, their cousin-germans; and killed them all on their wedding-night, excepting Hipermnestra, who saved her husband Linus.