[Footnote 4: From the "Cato Major, an Essay on Old Age." Translated by
Cyrus R. Edmonds. This work is composed in the form of a dialog, in
which, in the person of Cato the Censor as speaker, the benefits of
old age are pointed out.]
[Footnote 5: A famous athlete who was many times crowned at the
Pythian and Olympian games.]
[Footnote 6: Cneius Scipio was Consul in 222, and with Marcellus
completed the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. He served with his brother
Publius Cicero against the Carthaginians in Spain, where, after
several victories, both were slain in 212 B.C.]
[Footnote 7: Lucius Metellus, a Roman general who defeated the
Carthaginians at Panormus, now Palermo, Sicily, in 250 B.C.]
[Footnote 8: Masinissa, king of a small territory in northern Africa,
was at first an ally of Carthage against Rome, but afterward became an
ally of Rome against Carthage.]
[Footnote 9: The translator explains that the speeches here referred
to, as collected and published by Cato, numbered about 150. Cato was
known to his contemporaries as "the Roman Demosthenes." Later writers
often referred to him as "Cato the orator."]
[Footnote 10: Archytas was a Greek philosopher, eminent also as
statesman, mathematician, and general. He lived about 400 B.C., and is
credited with having saved the life of Plato through his influence
with Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. He was seven times general of
the army of Tarentum and successful in all his campaigns; eminent also
for domestic virtues. He is pronounced by a writer in Smith's
"Dictionary" to have been "among the very greatest men of antiquity."
He was drowned while making a voyage in the Adriatic.]
[Footnote 11: Caudium was a Samnite town near which the Romans were
defeated by Pontius Herennius.]
[Footnote 12: Not the Appius Claudius from whom the Appian Way and one
of the great aqueducts were named. The older Appius Claudius, here
referred to, lived in the century that followed Plato.]
[Footnote 13: Titus Flaminius, general and statesman, was Consul in
198 B.C. It was not Titus, but Caius Flaminius, who built the famous
circus and road bearing his name. Caius lived at an earlier period.]
[Footnote 14: Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, the eminent military genius,
who several times defeated the Romans before he was finally overthrown
by them at Beneventum in 275 B.C.]
[Footnote 15: Livius Andronicus, who lived in Rome about 240 B.C.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 17: The tyrant of Athens who reigned thirty-three years and
died about 527 B.C.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 19: Better known as the famous Regulus, whose alleged speech
to the "Conscript Fathers" has been declaimed by generations of
schoolboys.]
[Footnote 20: Lucius Paulus died at the battle of Cannae, which was
precipitated by his colleague Terentius Varro in 260 B.C., 40,000
Romans being killed by the Carthaginians.]
[Footnote 21: Marcellus, a Roman consul, who fought against Hannibal
and was killed in an ambuscade.]
[Footnote 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
Caesar and the unsettled state of public affairs that ensued, and in
which Cicero was concerned, prevented him from doing so.]
[Footnote 23: From Book I of the "Offices." Translated by Cyrus R.
Edmonds.]
[Footnote 24: Pausanias, a Spartan general, was the son of
Cloembrotus, the king of Sparta, killed at the battle of Leuctra.
Pausanias commanded at Plataea; but having conducted a treasonable
correspondence with Xerxes, was starved to death as a punishment.]
[Footnote 25: The general who contended against Sulla in the Civil
war.]
[Footnote 26: Catulus was consul with Marius in 102 B.C. He acted with
Sulla during the Civil war.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 28: From the Dialogue on "Friendship." Translated by Cyrus
E. Edmonds. Laelius, a Roman who was contemporary with the younger
Scipio, is made the speaker in the passage here quoted. Laelius, was a
son of Caius Laelius, 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 Laelius 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 Laelius."]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 30: Magna Graecia 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 Cumae, Sybaris, Locri,
Regium, Tarentum, Heraclea, and Paestum. At the last-named place
imposing ruins still survive.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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.]