[134] A full account of the inscription is to be found in Merivale’s History of the Romans, chap. xxxviii. ‘Augustus employed the next few months in compiling a succinct memorial of his public acts to be preserved in the archives of the state, a truly imperial work, and probably unique of its kind. The archives of Rome have long mouldered in the dust, but a ruined wall in a remote corner of her empire, engraved with this precious document, has been faithful to its trust for eighteen hundred years, and still presents us with one of the most curious records of antiquity. The inscription, which may still be read in the portico of a temple at Ancyra, attests the energy, sagacity, and fortune of the second Cæsar in a detailed register of all his public undertakings through a period of fifty-eight years,’ &c. In a note Dr. Merivale states that it was first copied by Busbecq in 1544. This is incorrect; Busbecq had it copied by his servants, and the date should be 1555.
[135] ‘Reges amici atque socii, et singuli in suo quisque regno, Cæsareas urbes condiderunt; et cuncti simul ædem Jovis Olympii, Athenis antiquitus inchoatam, perficere communi sumptu destinaverunt, genioque ejus dedicare.’—Suetonius, Octavius, chap. lx. Augustus directed a decree granting especial privileges to the Jews to be inscribed ἐν ἐπισημοτάτῳ τόπῳ γενηθέντι μοι ὑπὸ τοῦ κοινοῦ τῆς Ἀσίας ἐν Ἀγκύρῃ.—Josephus, Antiquities, xvi. 6.
[136] Menin (near Bousbecque) and its neighbourhood were famous for their capons. See L. Guicciardini, Description de tout le Païs bas, p. 311.
[137] There are different versions of this story, see Von Hammer, book v. and Gibbon, chap. lxiv. Creasy says that Amurath was killed by a Servian noble, Milosch Kabilovitsch. Being mortally wounded, Amurath died in the act of sentencing Lazarus, Despot or Cral of Servia, to death.
[138] The permanent corps of paid cavalry in the Turkish army was divided into four squadrons, organised like those which the Caliph Omar instituted for the guard of the Sacred Standard. The whole corps at first consisted of only 2,400 horsemen, but under Solyman the Great (Busbecq’s Sultan), the number was raised to 4,000. They marched on the right and left of the Sultan, they camped round his tent at night, and were his bodyguard in battle. One of these regiments of Royal Horseguards was called the Turkish Spahis, a term applied to cavalry soldiers generally, but also specially denoting these select horseguards. Another regiment was called the Silihdars, meaning ‘the vassal cavalry.’ A third was called the Ouloufedgis, meaning ‘the paid horsemen,’ and the fourth was called the Ghourebas, meaning ‘the foreign horse.’ See Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, chap. ii.
[139] Evelyn, who no doubt took the hint from Busbecq, induced Charles II. to adopt the Eastern dress. Diary, p. 324.
[140] See page [102] and note 1.
[141] See Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, chap. viii.: ‘The schism of the Sunnites and the Schiis (the first of whom acknowledge, and the last of whom repudiate the three immediate successors of the Prophet, the Caliphs Abubeker, Omar, and Othman) had distracted the Ottoman world from the earliest times. The Ottoman Turks have been Sunnites. The contrary tenets have prevailed in Persia; and the great founder of the Saffide dynasty in that country, Shah Ismael, was as eminent for his zeal for the Schii tenets, as for his ability in council, and his valour in the field. The doctrine of the Schiis had begun to spread among the subjects of the Sublime Porte before Selim came to the throne; and though the Sultan, the Ulema, and by far the larger portion of the Ottomans, held strictly to the orthodoxy of Sunnism, the Schiis were numerous in every province, and they seemed to be rapidly gaining proselytes. Selim determined to crush heresy at home before he went forth to combat it abroad, and in a deliberate spirit of fanatic cruelty he planned and executed a general slaughter of such of his subjects as were supposed to have fallen away from what their sovereigns considered to be the only true faith.’ This massacre took place in 1513. The Selim here mentioned was the father of Solyman. See Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, chap. viii. There was not much to choose between Philip of Spain in the West and Selim in the East! See Motley, Dutch Republic, part iii. chap. 2.
[142] Scordium, or water germander, is mentioned in Salmon’s Herbal as a sudorific, &c.; he notices that it has a smell of garlic, and that it is a specific against ‘measles, small-pox, and also the plague or pestilence itself.’ The plague is a form of blood poisoning; a medical friend whom we consulted considered that the symptoms indicated only a mild form of the disease; he also entirely approved of the physician’s treatment of the case.