[77] Urbani, servate uxores; moechum calvum adducimus: Aurum in Gallia effutuisti, hic sumpsisti mutuum.
[78] Plutarch tells us that the oil was used in a dish of asparagus. Every traveller knows that in those climates oil takes the place of butter as an ingredient in cookery, and it needs no experience to fancy what it is when rancid.
[79] Meritoria rheda; a light four-wheeled carriage, apparently hired either for the journey or from town to town. They were tolerably commodious, for Cicero writes to Atticus, (v. 17.) Hanc epistolam dictavi sedens in rheda, cum in castra proficiscerer.
[80] Plutarch informs us that Caesar travelled with such expedition, that he reached the Rhone on the eighth day after he left Rome.
[81] Caesar tells us himself that he employed C. Volusenus to reconnoitre the coast of Britain, sending him forward in a long ship, with orders to return and make his report before the expedition sailed.
[82] Religione; that is, the omens being unfavourable.
[83] The standard of the Roman legions was an eagle fixed on the head of a spear. It was silver, small in size, with expanded wings, and clutching a golden thunderbolt in its claw.
[84] To save them from the torture of a lingering death.
[85] Now Lerida, in Catalonia.
[86] The title of emperor was not new in Roman history; 1. It was sometimes given by the acclamations of the soldiers to those who commanded them. 2. It was synonymous with conqueror, and the troops hailed him by that title after a victory. In both these cases it was merely titular, and not permanent, and was generally written after the proper name, as Cicero imperator, Lentulo imperatore. 3. It assumed a permanent and royal character first in the person of Julius Caesar, and was then generally prefixed to the emperor's name in inscriptions, as IMP. CAESAR. DIVI. etc.