[133] This was Agis III. who at the time of the battle of Issus, B.C. 333, was communicating with the Persian naval commanders in the Ægean, to obtain supplies for the war against the Macedonians. He was killed in action, about the time of the battle of Arbela, B.C. 331.
[134] The second month of the Attic year, the latter half of August and first of September. The two next months mentioned in the text correspond to the latter half of September and the first of October and the latter half of October and first of November respectively.
[135] A small island in the Saronic Gulf off the coast of Argolis and opposite Troezen, where was a celebrated temple of Poseidon which was regarded as an inviolable asylum. Hither Demosthenes fled to avoid Antipater, and here he took poison, B.C. 322.
[136] The Greek word signifies a reed, in the upper part of which poison might easily be placed.
[137] A festival in honour of Demeter. For details see Smith ‘Dict. of Antiq.’
[138] The Helvia Gens was plebeian. It becomes historical from the time of the second Punic war, and became ennobled (nobilis) by M. Helvius being elected prætor B.C. 197, the first year in which six prætors were elected (Liv. 32. c. 27). It is said that Cicero never mentions his mother in his writings, but an anecdote of her careful housekeeping is recorded by her son Quintus (Cic. Ad Diversos, xvi. 26).
The allusion is to the Volscian with whom Coriolanus took refuge when he left Rome (Plutarch, Life of Coriolanus, c. 22; Livy, 2, c. 35).
[139] Cicero himself did not claim any illustrious descent. The family had been long settled at Arpinum, now Arpino, a Volscian town. The first person who is mentioned as bearing the name of Cicero is C. Claudius Cicero, a tribunus plebis, B.C. 454 (Liv. 3. c. 31). M. Tullius Cicero, the grandfather of the orator, was born B.C. 140, and nothing is known of the orator’s family before him. Arpinum received the limited Roman civitas in B.C. 303 (Liv. 10. c. 1), that is, probably Commercium and Connubium, for the suffrage (suffragii latio) was not given to the people of Arpinum till B.C. 188 (Liv. 38. c. 36). The orator’s grandfather lived to see his grandson born B.C. 106. Cicero’s father belonged to the class of Equites. He spent the greater part of his life on his lands at Arpinum, near the junction of the Fibrenus with the Liris (Garigliano). He afterwards removed to Rome to educate his sons Marcus and Quintus, and had a house in the Carinæ. Among his friends were the orators M. Antonius and Lucius Crassus, and Q. Scævola the Augur, a distinguished Jurist. His sons had accordingly the advantage of being acquainted in their youth with some of the most distinguished of the Romans. He is said to have died B.C. 64, the year before his son was consul. A letter of Cicero to Atticus (i. 6) is generally supposed to speak of his father’s death, but the true reading is undoubtedly “pater a nobis discessit;” and it is plain that Cicero is simply speaking of his father leaving Rome for a time (Drumann, Tullii, p. 213).
[140] The cognomen Cicero, as already observed, occurs early in Roman history. Many of the Roman cognomina were derived from some particular plant which a man cultivated, or from some personal peculiarity, or from some other accidental circumstance. The mark on the nose is just as likely to be the origin of the name as the cultivation of the cicer; for if the name Fabius comes from faba, “a bean,” and Lentulus, from lens, “pulse;” yet Catulus means “a whelp,” and Scaurus means “knock-knee’d,” or something of the kind.
The words διαστόλη, διαφύη mean what I have translated them. Kaltwasser has translated the passage thus, according to Reiske’s explanation:—“Jener hatte an der spitze der nase einen kleinen anwuchs oder warze in form einer solchen erbse, woven er den beinamen erhielt.” But this is not a translation. Plutarch does not say that he had a wart at the end of his nose, but that the end of his nose was like a vetch, because there was a kind of split or cleft in it. There is no reason for misrepresenting even a man’s nose.