[15] Livius Andronicus, who lived in Rome about 240 b.c.
[16] A small island (now a peninsula), lying off the coast of Spain. It is to-day called Cadiz, but anciently was known as Erythia, Tartessus, and Gades. It was founded about 1100 b.c., by the Phenicians, of whose western commerce it was the center.
[17] The tyrant of Athens who reigned thirty-three years and died about 527 b.c.
[18] Melmoth has commented on this passage that, altho suicide too generally prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, the wisest philosophers condemned it. "Nothing," he says, "can be more clear and explicit" than the prohibition imposed by Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato.
[19] Better known as the famous Regulus, whose alleged speech to the "Conscript Fathers" has been declaimed by generations of schoolboys.
[20] Lucius Paulus died at the battle of Cannæ, which was precipitated by his colleague Terentius Varro in 260 b.c., 40,000 Romans being killed by the Carthaginians.
[21] Marcellus, a Roman consul, who fought against Hannibal and was killed in an ambuscade.
[22] Cicero's daughter was born about 79 b.c., and thrice married, the last time to Dolabella, who has been described as "one of the most profligate men of a profligate age." She was divorced from Dolabella in 44 b.c., gave birth to a son soon afterward, and died in the same year. Cicero's letter was written in reply to one which he had received from Servius Sulpicius, a celebrated Roman jurist. Cicero intended to erect a temple as a memorial to Tullia, but the death of Cæsar and the unsettled state of public affairs that ensued, and in which Cicero was concerned, prevented him from doing so.
[23] From Book I of the "Offices." Translated by Cyrus R. Edmonds.
[24] Pausanias, a Spartan general, was the son of Clœmbrotus, the king of Sparta, killed at the battle of Leuctra. Pausanias commanded at Platæa; but having conducted a treasonable correspondence with Xerxes, was starved to death as a punishment.