[10] This kingdom was situated in Asia Minor, on the southern and eastern shores of the Euxine (Black) Sea, between Bithynia and Armenia. With the first-named region it constituted the extreme north-western portion of what is now Asiatic Turkey.—G. T. F.
[11] The office charged with financial administration. A military prætor was at the head of the pay and commissary department.—G. T. F.
[12] Publius Cornelius Cinna, consul from 86 B.C. to 83.—G. T. F.
[13] Gallio was the proconsul of Achaia, and the elder brother of the philosopher Seneca. The Apostle Paul was brought before his judgment-seat by the Jews, and he thus answered: “If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you. But if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters.” Acts 18: 14, 15. The name has become a synonym for the attitude of philosophical indifference. (G.F.F.)
[14] The legal fiction of the republic and of its governmental machinery was carefully perpetuated by Augustus and his successors in the empire until the destruction of the Western Empire. Public acts were in the name of the “senate and people of Rome.” The same pious fraud continued in the Empire of the East till the reign of Justinian.—G. T. F.
[15] This historian was one of the most bitter and bigoted of the writers under the new Christian epoch; and his partisanship was pursued with an acrimony unworthy of the great cause in which he was retained.—G. T. F.
[16] The Emperor Julian was succeeded by Jovian, one of his generals, who was at once proclaimed by the troops. Before, however, he could march to Constantinople he died from a fit of indigestion, or of poison. Valentinian, a general of Pannonian ancestry distinguished for his military skill and courage, was then proclaimed.—G. T. F.
[17] Theodosius, though justly provoked by the contumacy of the people of Antioch in casting down and destroying his statues, consulted pride rather than justice in the severe measures which he at first proposed, which would have depopulated Antioch, confiscated its wealth, and destroyed its rank as a capital. The punishment of Thessalonica, on the other hand, though cruel and excessive, was prompted by a cause more adequate. A favorite general, Botheric, was brutally assassinated by the turbulent populace in a circus riot. The wrath of the outraged emperor was only satiated by a promiscuous massacre of from seven to fifteen thousand people.—G. T. F.
[18] The characters mentioned by Sir William Temple, the author alluded to, are Belisarius, Ætius, John Hunniades, Gonsalvo of Cordova, Scanderbeg, Alexander Duke of Parma, and the Prince of Orange.
[19] Gibbon, while recognizing the correct orthography of the name Mohammed, prefers to use the then popular substitute of “Mahomet,” as that by which the Arabian prophet was almost universally known.—G. T. F.