Dio's Rome Volume II Part 18

[Footnote 74: In the MS, some corruption has jumbled these names together. The correct interpretation was furnished by Xylander and Leunclavius.]

[Footnote 75: The year 47, in which Caesar came to Rome, is here meant, or else Dio has made an error.]

[Footnote 76: _M. Caelius Rufus_.]

[Footnote 77: This is one of some twenty different phases (listed in Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus der Romer_, p. 212) under which the G.o.ddess was worshipped. (See also Roscher 1, col. 1513.) The appropriate Latin t.i.tle was _Fortuna Respiciens_, and it certainly had a Greek equivalent ([Greek: Tuoae hepistrephomenae] in Plutarch, _de fortuna Romanorum_, c. 10) which it seems strange that Dio should not have known. Moreover, our historian has apparently given a wrong interpretation of the name, since _respicio_ in Latin, when used of the G.o.ds, commonly means to "look favorably upon." In Plautus's _Captivi_ (verse 834) there is a play on the word _respice_ involving the G.o.ddess, and in his _Asinaria_ (verse 716) mention is made of a closely related divinity, Fortuna Obsequens. Cicero (_de legibus_, II, 11, 28), in enumerating the divinities that merit human worship, includes "Fortuna, quae est vel Huius diei--nam valet in omnis dies--vel Respiciens ad opem ferendam, vel Fors, in quo incerti casus significantur magis" ... The name Fortuna Respiciens has also come to light in at least three inscriptions.]

[Footnote 78: This is the phrase commonly supplied to explain a palpable corruption in the MS.]

[Footnote 79: It seems probable that a few words have fallen out of the original narrative at this point. Such is the opinion of both Dindorf and Hoelzl.]

[Footnote 80: Compare Book Thirty-six, chapters 12 and 13.]

[Footnote 81: _I.e._, "Citizens."]

[Footnote 82: Xylander and Leunclavius supply this necessary word lacking in the MS.]

[Footnote 83: Compare Plutarch, Life of Caesar, chapter 52, and Suetonius, Life of Caesar, chapter 59.]

[Footnote 84: Better known as the _Phaedo._]

[Footnote 85: The Greek word representing "for a second time" is not in the MS., but is supplied with the best of reason by Schenkl and also Cobet (see Mnemosyne N.S.X., p. 196). It was Caesar's regular custom to spare any who were taken captive for the first time, but invariably to put them to death if they were again caught opposing him in arms.

References in Dio are numerous: Compare Book 41, chapter 62; Book 43, chapter 17; Book 44, chapter 45; Book 44, chapter 46. The same rule for the treatment of captives finds mention also in the Life of Caesar by Suetonius, chapter 75.]

[Footnote 86: The last three words of this sentence are not found in the MS., but as a correlative clause of contrast is evidently needed to complete the sense, this, or something similar, is supplied by most editors.]

[Footnote 87: Reading [Greek: sunaeranto] with Bekker and Reiske in place of [Greek: prosaeranto].]

[Footnote 88: These blatherskite jests formed a part of the ritual of the triumph, for the purpose of averting the possible jealousy of Heaven. Compare, in general, the interesting description of a triumph given in Fragment 23 (volume VI).]

[Footnote 89: Reading [Greek: haetiazeto] (Cobet's preference).]

[Footnote 90: Caesar's conduct during his stay with Nicomedes (with embellishments) was thrown in his teeth repeatedly during his career.

According to Suetonius (Life of Caesar, chapter 49) the soldiers sang scurrilous verses, as follows:

Gallias Caesar subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem. Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit Gallias, Nicomedes non triumphat qui subegit Caesarem.

Dio undoubtedly had these verses before him, in either Suetonius or some other work, but seems to have been too slow-witted to appreciate the _double entendre_ in _subegit_, which may signify voluptuary as well as military prowess. Hence, though he might have turned the expression exactly by [Greek: hupaegageto] he contented himself with the prosaic [Greek: hedoulosato]]

[Footnote 91: This remark (as Cobet pointed out) is evidently a perversion of an old nursery jingle (nenia):

_Si male faxis vapulabis, si bene faxis rex eris._

And another form of it is found in Horace, Epistles (I, 1, 59-60):

_at pueri ludentes 'rex eris' aiunt 'si recte fades.'_

The soldiers simply changed the position of male and bene in the line above cited.]

[Footnote 92: Possibly, Boissevain thinks, this is a corruption for the Furius Leptinus mentioned by Suetonius, Life of Caesar, chapter 39.]

[Footnote 93: At present seven scattered months have thirty-one days.

Caesar, when he took the Alexandrian month of thirty days as his standard, found the same discrepancy of five days as did the Egyptians.

Besides these he lopped two more days off one particular month, then spread his remainder of seven through the year.]

[Footnote 94: I follow in this sentence the reading of all the older texts as well as Boissevain's. Only Dindorf and Melber omit [Greek: chai tetrachosiois], making the number of years 1061. The usual figuring, 1461, has pertinence: the number is just four times 365-1/4 and was recognized as an Egyptian year-cycle.

As to the facts, however, Sturz points out (note 139 to Book 43) that after the elapse of fourteen hundred and sixty-one years eleven days must be subtracted instead of one day added. Pope Gregory XIII ascertained this when in A.D. 1582 he summoned Aloysius and Antonius Lilius to advise him in regard to the calendar. (Boissee also refers here to Ideler, _Manuel de Chronologie_, II, 119ff.)]

[Footnote 95: The name of these islands is spelled both _Gymnasioe and Gymnesioe_, and they are also called _Baleares_ and _Pityusoe_. Cp. the end of IX, 10, in the transcript of Zonaras (Volume I).]

[Footnote 96: This is of course New Carthage (Karthago Nova), the Spanish colony of the African city.]

[Footnote 97: At the close of this chapter there are undoubtedly certain gaps in the MS., as Dindorf discerned. In the Tauchnitz stereotyped edition, which usually insists upon wresting some sense from such pa.s.sages either by conjecture or by emendation, the following sentence appears: "But Pompey made light of these supernatural effects, and the war shrank to the compa.s.s of a battle." Boissevain (with a suggestion by Kuiper) reads: [Greek: all haege gar to daimonion hen te oligoria auto hepoihaesato chai es polin Moundan pros machaen dae chatestae]. This would mean: "But Heaven, which he had slighted, led his steps, and he took up his quarters in a city called Munda preparatory to battle."]

[Footnote 98: Mommsen in his Roman History (third German edition, p.

627, note 1), remarks that Dio must have confused the son of Bocchus with the son of Ma.s.sinissa, Arabio, who certainly did align himself with the Pompeian party (Appian, Civil Wars, IV, 54). All other evidence, outside of this one pa.s.sage, shows the two kings to have been steadfastly loyal to Caesar, behavior which brought them tangible profit in the shape of enlargement of their domains.]

[Footnote 99: I.e., they were in arms against Caesar a second time.

Compare the note on chapter 12.]

[Footnote 100: This name is spelled _Coesonius_ in Florus's Epitome of Livy's Thirteenth Book (=Florus II, 13, 86) and also in Orosius's Narratives for the Discomfiture of Pagans (VI, 16, 9), but appears with the same form as here in Cicero's Philippics, XII, 9, 23.]

[Footnote 101: The MS. has only "Fabius and Quintus." Mommsen supplies their entire names from chapter 31 of this book.]

[Footnote 102: This was originally a festival of Pales-Palatua, and information regarding its introduction is intercepted by remote antiquity. In historical times we find it celebrated as the commemoration of the founding of Rome, because Pales-Palatua was a divinity closely connected with the Palatine, where the city first stood. From Hadrian's time on special brilliance attached to the occasion, and it was dignified by the epithet "Roman" (Athenaeus). As late as the fifth century it was still known as "the birthday of the city of Rome." Both forms, _Parilia_ and _Palilia_ occur. (Mentioned also in Book Forty-five, chapter 6.)]

[Footnote 103: Licentiousness and general laxity of morals.]

[Footnote 104: The last clause of this chapter as it appears in the MS.

is evidently corrupt. The reading adopted is that of Madvig, modified by Melber.]

[Footnote 105: Verb supplied (to fill MS gap) by R. Stepha.n.u.s and Leunclavius.]

[Footnote 106: _L. Minucius Basilus._]

[Footnote 107: Reading, with Boissevain, [Greek: antecharteraese].]

[Footnote 108: A gap in the MS.--Verb conjectured by Bekker on the a.n.a.logy of a pa.s.sage in chapter 53.]

[Footnote 109: The father of Pompey the Great.]

[Footnote 110: In other words, the _Lupercalia_. The two other colleges of Lupercales to which allusion is made were known as the Quintilian and the Fabian.]

[Footnote 111: Compare Suetonius (Life of Caesar), chapter 52.]

[Footnote 112: It is here, with this word, that one of the two most important ma.n.u.scripts of Dio (the codex Venetus or Marcia.n.u.s 395) begins.]

[Footnote 113: Most editors have gotten over the difficulty of this "and" in the MS. by omitting it. Dindorf, however, believed it to indicate a real gap.]