Letters of Pliny Part 12

[Footnote 64: The Romans had an absolute power over their children, of which no age or station of the latter deprived them.]

[Footnote 65: Their business was to interpret dreams, oracles, prodigies, &c., and to foretell whether any action should be fortunate or prejudicial, to particular persons, or to the whole commonwealth. Upon this account, they very often occasioned the displacing of magistrates, the deferring of public a.s.semblies, &c. Kennet's Ron,. Antig. M.]

[Footnote 66: Trajan.]

[Footnote 67: A slave was incapable of property; and, therefore, whatever he acquired became the right of his master. M.]

[Footnote 68: "Their office was to attend upon the rites of Vests, the chief part of which was the preservation of the holy fire. If this fire happened to go out, it was considered impiety to light it at any common flame, but they made use of the pure and unpolluted rays of the sun for that purpose. There were various other duties besides connected with their office. The chief rules prescribed them were, to vow the strictest chast.i.ty, for the s.p.a.ce of thirty years. After this term was completed, they had liberty to leave the order. If they broke their vow of virginity, they were buried alive in a place allotted to that peculiar use." Kennet's Antiq. Their reputation for sanct.i.ty was so high that Livy mentions the fact of two of those virgins having violated their vows, as a prodigy that, threatened destruction to the Roman state.

Lib. XXII. C. 57. And Suetonius inform, us that Augiastus had so high an opinion of this religious order, that he consigned the care of his will to the Vestal Virgins. Suet, in vit. Aug. C. XCI. M.]

[Footnote 69: It was usual with Domitian to triumph, not only without a victory, but even after a defeat, M.]

[Footnote 70: Euripides' Hecuba,]

[Footnote 71: The punishment inflicted upon the violators of Vestal chast.i.ty was to be scourged to death. M.]

[Footnote 72: Calpurnia, Pliny's wife.]

[Footnote 73: Gratilla was the wife of Rusticus: Rusticus was put to death by Domitian, and Gratilla banished. It was sufficient crime in the reign of that execrable prince to be even a friend of those who were obnoxious to him. M.]

[Footnote 74: In the original, scrinium, box for holding MSS.]

[Footnote 75: The hippodromus, in its proper signification, was a place, among the Grecians, set apart for horse-racing and other exercises of that kind. But it seems here to be nothing more than a particular walk, to which Pliny perhaps gave that name, from its bearing some resemblance in its form to the public places so called. M.]

[Footnote 76: Now called Frascati, Tivoli, and Palestrina, all of them situated in the Campagna di Roma, and at no great distance from Rome. M.]

[Footnote 77: "This is said in allusion to the idea of Nemesis supposed to threaten excessive prosperity." (Church and Brodribb.)]

[Footnote 78: About $15,000.]

[Footnote 79: About $42,000.]

[Footnote 80: None had the right of using family pictures or statues but those whose ancestors or themselves had borne some of the highest dignities.

So that the jus imaginis was much the same thing among the Romans as the right of bearing a coat of arms among us. Ken. Antiq. M.]

[Footnote 81: The Roman physicians used to send their patients in consumptive cases into Egypt, particularly to Alexandria. M.]

[Footnote 82: Frejus, in Provence, the southern part of France. M.]

[Footnote 83: A court of justice erected by Julius Caesar in the forum, and opposite to the basilica Aemilia.]

[Footnote 84: The deceniviri seem to have been magistrates for the administration of justice, subordinate to the praetors, who (to give the English reader a general notion of their office) may be termed lords chief justices, as the judges here mentioned were something in the nature of our juries. M.]

[Footnote 85: About $400.]

[Footnote 86: This silly piece of superst.i.tion seems to have been peculiar to Regulus, and not of any general practice; at least it is a custom of which we find no other mention in antiquity. M.]

[Footnote 87: "We gather from Martial that the wearing of these was not an unusual practice with fops and dandies." See Epig. II. 29, in which he ridicules a certain Rufus, and hints that if you were to "strip off the 'splenia (plasters)' from his face, you would find out that he was a branded runaway slave." (Church and Brodribb.)]

[Footnote 88: His wife.]

[Footnote 89: Horn. II. lib, I. V. 88.]

[Footnote 90: Now Alzia, not far from Corno.]

[Footnote 91: Nevertheless, Javolentis Priscus was one of the most eminent lawyers of his time, and is frequently quoted in the Digesta of Justinian.]

[Footnote 92: In the Bay of Naples.]

[Footnote 93: The Romans used to lie or walk naked in the sun, after anointing their bodies with oil, which was esteemed as greatly contributing to health, and therefore daily practised by them. This custom, however, of anointing themselves, is inveighed against by the Satirists as in the number of their luxurious indulgences: but since we find the elder Pliny here, and the amiable Spurinna in a former letter, practising this method, we can not suppose the thing itself was esteemed unmanly, but only when it was attended with some particular circ.u.mstances of an over-refined delicacy. M.]

[Footnote 94: Now called Castelamare, in the Bay of Naples. M.]

[Footnote 95: The Stoic and Epicurean philosophers held that the world was to be destroyed by fire, and all things fall again into original chaos; not excepting even the national G.o.ds themselves from the destruction of this general conflagration. M.]

[Footnote 96: The lake Larius.]

[Footnote 97: Those families were styled patrician whose ancestors had been members of the senate in the earliest times of the regal or consular government. M.]

[Footnote 98: Trajan]

[Footnote 99: The consuls, though they were chosen in August, did not enter upon their office till the first of January, during which interval they were styled consules designati, consuls elect. It was usual for them upon that occasion to compliment the emperor, by whose appointment, after the dissolution of the republican government, they were chosen. M.]

[Footnote 100: So called, because it formerly belonged to Camillus. M.]

[Footnote 101: Civita Vecchia.]

[Footnote 102: Trajan.]

[Footnote 103: An officer in the Roman legions, answering in some sort to a captain In our companies. M.]

[Footnote 104: This law was made by Augustus Caesar; but it nowhere clearly appears what was the peculiar punishment it inflicted. M.]

[Footnote 105: An officer employed by the emperor to receive and regulate the public revenue in the provinces. M.]

[Footnote 106: Comprehending Transylvania, Moldavia, and Walaehia. M.]

[Footnote 107: Polycletus was a freedman, and great favourite of Nero. M.]

[Footnote 108: Memmius, or Rhemmius (the critics are not agreed which), was author of a law by which it was enacted that whosoever was convicted of calumny and false accusation should be stigmatised with a mark in his forehead; and by the law of the twelve tables, false accusers were to suffer the same punishment as would have been inflicted upon the person unjustly accused if the crime had been proved. M.]

[Footnote 109: Trajan.]

[Footnote 110: Unction was much esteemed and prescribed by the ancients. Celsus expressly recommends it in the remission of acute distempers: "ungi leniterque pertractari corpus, etiam in acutic et recentibus niorbis opartet; us rernissione fumen," &c. Celsi Med. ed. Aliucloveen, p. 88.

M.]

[Footnote 111: His wife.]