[111] Helenus was a son of Priam and Hecuba. He is represented as a prophet in the Philoctetes of Sophocles. And in the Æneid he is also represented as king of part of Epirus, and as predicting to Æneas the dangers and fortunes which awaited him.
[112] This short passage would be very obscure to the reader without an explanation from another of Cicero’s treatises. The expression here, ad investigandum suem regiones vineæ terminavit, which is a metaphor too bold, if it was not a sort of augural language, seems to me to have been the effect of carelessness in our great author; for Navius did not divide the regions, as he calls them, of the vine to find his sow, but to find a grape.
[113] The Peremnia were a sort of auspices performed just before the passing a river.
[114] The Acumina were a military auspices, and were partly performed on the point of a spear, from which they were called Acumina.
[115] Those were called testamenta in procinctu, which were made by soldiers just before an engagement, in the presence of men called as witnesses.
[116] This especially refers to the Decii, one of whom devoted himself for his country in the war with the Latins, 340 b.c., and his son imitated the action in the war with the Samnites, 295 b.c. Cicero (Tusc. i. 37) says that his son did the same thing in the war with Pyrrhus at the battle of Asculum, though in other places (De Off. iii. 4) he speaks of only two Decii as having signalized themselves in this manner.
[117] The Rogator, who collected the votes, and pronounced who was the person chosen. There were two sorts of Rogators; one was the officer here mentioned, and the other was the Rogator, or speaker of the whole assembly.
[118] Which was Sardinia, as appears from one of Cicero’s epistles to his brother Quintus.
[119] Their sacred books of ceremonies.
[120] The war between Octavius and Cinna, the consuls.