[12] A Roman who aspired to the highest offices of the State, prepared his way by the magnificence of his public entertainments during his curule ædileship, and by his affable manners. An humble individual is always gratified when a great man addresses him by name, and a shake of the hand secures his devotion. Ovidius (Ars Amat. ii. 253) alludes to this way of winning popular favour, and judiciously observes that it costs nothing, which would certainly recommend it to Crassus. If a man's memory was not so good as that of Crassus, he had only to buy a slave, as Horatius (1 Epist. i. 50) recommends, who could tell him the name of every man whom he met. Such a slave was called Nomenclator. If the nomenclator's memory ever failed him, he would not let his master know it: he gave a person any name that came into his head.
[13] The Greek is στέγαστρου, 'something that covers;' but whether cloak or hat, or covered couch, or sedan, the learned have not yet determined.
[14] These words may not be Plutarch's, and several critics have marked them as spurious. The Peripatetics, of whom Alexander was one, did not consider wealth as one of the things that are indifferent to a philosopher; the Stoics did.
[15] This is Plutarch's word; but the father of Crassus was Proconsul in Spain. When Cinna and Marius returned to Rome, B.C. 87, Crassus and his sons were proscribed. Crassus and one of his sons lost their lives: the circumstances are stated somewhat differently by different writers. (Florius, iii. 21; Appian, Civil Wars, i. 72.)
Drumann correctly remarks that Plutarch and other Greek writers often use the word στρατηγός simply to signify one who has command, and that στρατηγός is incorrectly rendered 'Prætor' by those who write in Latin, when they make use of the Greek historians of Rome. But Plutarch's στρατηγός sometimes means prætor, and it is the word by which he denotes that office; he probably does sometimes mean to say 'prætor,' when the man of whom he speaks was not prætor. Whether στρατηγός in Plutarch is always translated prætor or always Commander, there will be error. To translate it correctly in all cases, a man must know whether the person spoken of was prætor or not; and that cannot always be ascertained. But besides this, the word 'Commander' will not do, for Plutarch sometimes calls a Proconsul στρατηγός, and a Proconsul had not merely a command: he had a government also.
[16] So the name is written by Sintenis, who writes it Paccianus in the Life of Sertorius, c. 9. Some editions read Paciacus; but the termination in Paciacus is hardly Roman, and the termination in Pacianus is common. But the form Paciacus is adopted by Drumann, where he is speaking of L. Junius Paciacus (Geshichte Roms, iv. p. 52).
Drumann observes that the flight of Crassus to Spain must have taken place B.C. 85, for he remained eight months in Spain and returned to Rome on the news of Cinna's death, B.C. 84.
[17] The MSS. have αὖραν, 'breeze,' which Coræs ingeniously corrected to λαύπαν, 'path,' which is undoubtedly right.
[18] If Fenestella died in A.D. 19 at the age of seventy, as it is said, he would be born in B.C. 51, and he might have had this story from the old woman. (Clinton, Fasti, A.D. 14.) See Life of Sulla, c. 28.
[19] Malaca, which still retains its name Malaga, was an old Phœnician settlement on the south coast of Spain. Much fish was salted and cured there; but I know not on what ground Kaltwasser concludes that the word 'Malach' means Salt. It is sometimes asserted that the name is from the Aramaic word Malek, 'King;' but W. Humboldt (Prüfung der Untersuchungen über die Urbewohner Hispaniens) says that it is a Basque word.