_Mistake in Gibbon_.--Those of your readers, who are, like myself,
occasional verifiers of references, will perhaps thank me for pointing
out a false reference, that I have just discovered in one of Gibbon's
notes:
"Capitolinus gives us the particulars of these tumultuary
votes, which were moved by one senator, and repeated, or
rather chanted, by the whole body."--_Hist. August._ p. 52.
See Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, chap. 4, note {342} under marginal
lemma, "The memory of Commodus declared infamous."
These "tumultuary votes" are recorded, _not_ by Capitolinus, but by
Ælius Lampridius, in his _Life of Commodus_. Vide _Historiæ Augustæ
Scriptores. Ælii Lampridii Commodus Antoninus_, capita 18, 19.
Capitolinus wrote the life of his _immediate_ successor, Pertinax;
hence perhaps the mistake, "Egregio in corpore nævus!" Let those who
wish to know what passion really is, read the tiger-like yells of the
Roman senate in _Lampridius_!