[13] The Simonides here meant is the celebrated poet of Ceos, the perfecter of elegiac poetry among the Greeks. He flourished about the time of the Persian war. Besides his poetry, he is said to have been the inventor of some method of aiding the memory. He died at the court of Hiero, 467 b.c.
[14] Theodectes was a native of Phaselis, in Pamphylia, a distinguished rhetorician and tragic poet, and flourished in the time of Philip of Macedon. He was a pupil of Isocrates, and lived at Athens, and died there at the age of forty-one.
[15] Cineas was a Thessalian, and (as is said in the text) came to Rome as ambassador from Pyrrhus after the battle of Heraclea, 280 b.c., and his memory is said to have been so great that on the day after his arrival he was able to address all the senators and knights by name. He probably died before Pyrrhus returned to Italy, 276 b.c.
[16] Charmadas, called also Charmides, was a fellow-pupil with Philo, the Larissæan of Clitomachus, the Carthaginian. He is said by some authors to have founded a fourth academy.
[17] Metrodorus was a minister of Mithridates the Great; and employed by him as supreme judge in Pontus, and afterward as an ambassador. Cicero speaks of him in other places (De Orat. ii. 88) as a man of wonderful memory.
[18] Quintus Hortensius was eight years older than Cicero; and, till Cicero’s fame surpassed his, he was accounted the most eloquent of all the Romans. He was Verres’s counsel in the prosecution conducted against him by Cicero. Seneca relates that his memory was so great that he could come out of an auction and repeat the catalogue backward. He died 50 b.c.
[19] This treatise is one which has not come down to us, but which had been lately composed by Cicero in order to comfort himself for the loss of his daughter.
[20] The epigram is,
Εἴπας Ἥλιε χαῖρε, Κλεόμβροτος Ὥμβρακιώτης
ἥλατ’ ἀφ’ ὑψηλοῦ τείχεος εἰς Ἀΐδην,