[25] The general who contended against Sulla in the Civil war.
[26] Catulus was consul with Marius in 102 b.c. He acted with Sulla during the Civil war.
[27] Nasica, "a fierce and stiff-necked aristocrat," was of the family of Scipios. When the consuls refused to resort to violence against Tiberius Gracchus, it was he who led the senators forth from their meeting-place against the popular assembly outside, with whom ensued a fight, in which Gracchus was killed by a blow from a club. Nasica left Rome soon after, seeking safety. After spending some time as a wandering exile, he died at Pergamus.
[28] From the Dialogue on "Friendship." Translated by Cyrus E. Edmonds. Lælius, a Roman who was contemporary with the younger Scipio, is made the speaker in the passage here quoted. Lælius, was a son of Caius Lælius, the friend and companion of the elder Scipio, whose actions are so interwoven with those of Scipio that a writer in Smith's "Dictionary" says, "It is difficult to relate them separately." The younger Lælius was intimate with the younger Scipio in a degree almost as remarkable as his father had been with the elder. The younger, immortalized by Cicero's treatise on Friendship, was born about 186 b.c., and was a man of fine culture noted as an orator. His personal worth was so generally esteemed that it survived to Seneca's day. One of Seneca's injunctions to a friend was that he should "live like Lælius."
[29] Scipio Africanus minor by whom Carthage was destroyed in 146 b.c., and Numantia, a town of Spain, was destroyed in 133 b.c. From the letter he obtained the surname of Numantinus.
[30] Magna Græcia was a name given by the ancients to that part of southern Italy which, before the rise of the Roman state, was colonized by Greeks. Its time of greatest splendor was the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.; that is, intermediate between the Homeric age and the Periclean. Among its leading cities were Cumæ, Sybaris, Locri, Regium, Tarentum, Heraclea, and Pæstum. At the last-named place imposing ruins still survive.
[31] Empedocles, philosopher, poet, and historian, who lived et Agrigentum in Sicily, about 490-430 b.c., and wrote a poem on the doctrines of Pythagoras. A legend has survived that he jumped into the crater of Etna, in order that people might conclude, from his complete disappearance, that he was a god. Matthew Arnold's poem on this incident is among his better-known works.
[32] Tarquinius Superbus, seventh and last King of Rome, occupied the throne for twenty-five years, and as a consequence of the rape of Lucretia by his son Sextus was banished about 509 b.c.