Dio's Rome Volume II Part 17

[Footnote 29: Reading [Greek: proskatastanton] (as Boissevain).]

[Footnote 30: The reading here has been subjected to criticism (compare Naber in Mnemosyne, XVI, p. 109), but see Cicero, _De Lege Agraria_ 2, 9, 24 and Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, I^2, 468, 3.]

[Footnote 31: The words [Greek: epeidae outoi] are supplied here by Reiske.]

[Footnote 32: In regard to this matter see Mnemosyne N.S. XIX, p. 106, note 2. The article in question is by I.M.J. Valeton, who agrees with Mommsen's conclusions (_Staatsrecht_, III, p. 1058, note 2).]

[Footnote 33: Reading [Greek: pote] with Boissevain. There is apparently a reference to the year B.C. 100, and to the refusal of Metellus Numidicus to swear to the _lex Appuleia_.]

[Footnote 34: Following Reiske's arrangement: [Greek: os mentoi ae aemera aechen, en emellon ...].]

[Footnote 35: The verb is supplied by Reiske.]

[Footnote 36: Following Reiske's reading: _[Greek: ae ina ta mellonta cholotheiae]_]

[Footnote 37: Gaps in the text supplied by Reiske.]

[Footnote 38: Gaps in the text supplied by Reiske.]

[Footnote 39: Gaps in the text supplied by Reiske.]

[Footnote 40: Gaps in the text supplied by Reiske.]

[Footnote 41: The suggestion of Boissevain (euthus) or of Mommsen (authicha) is here adopted in preference to the MS. authis (evidently erroneous).]

[Footnote 42: Verb supplied by Xylander.]

[Footnote 43: Or five hundred miles, since Dio reckons a mile as equivalent to seven and one-half instead of eight stades.]

[Footnote 44: The MS. is corrupt. Perhaps Hannibal is meant, perhaps Aeneas.]

[Footnote 45: Reading [Greek: epithumian] (with Boissevain).]

[Footnote 46: Reading [Greek: enaellonto], proposed in Mnemosyne N.S. X, p. 196, by Cobet, who compares Caesar's Gallic War I, 52, 5; and adopted by Boissevain.]

[Footnote 47: Two words to fill a gap are suggested by Bekker.]

[Footnote 48: Four words to fill a gap supplied by Reiske.]

[Footnote 49: Reading [Greek: paraen] (as Boissevain).]

[Footnote 50: Words equivalent to "the more insistent" are easily supplied from the context, as suggested by v. Herwerden, Wagner, and Leunclavius.]

[Footnote 51: This is a younger brother of that Ptolemy Auletes who was expelled from Egypt and subsequently restored (see chapter 55), and is the same one mentioned in Book Thirty-eight, chapter 30.]

[Footnote 52: This statement of Dio's appears to be erroneous. See Cicero, _Ad Familiares_ I, 7, 10, and Mommsen, _Staatsrecht_, 22, 672.]

[Footnote 53: Gap in the MS. supplied by Bekker's conjecture.]

[Footnote 54: Suetonius says "five years" (Life of Caesar, chapter 24), and Plutarch and Appian make a similar statement of the time. (Plutarch, Caesar, chapter 21, and Pompey, chapters 51, 52. Appian, Civil War, II, 17.)]

[Footnote 55: The two kinds of naval tactics mentioned here (Greek: periplous] and [Greek: diechplous]) consist respectively (1) in describing a semi-circle and making a broadside attack with the purpose of ramming an opposing vessel, and (2) in das.h.i.+ng through the hostile ranks, breaking the oars of some s.h.i.+p and then returning to ram it when disabled. Both methods were employed in early Greek as well as in Roman warfare.]

[Footnote 56: Dio has evidently imitated at this point a sentence in Herodotos, VIII, 6 (as shown by the phraseology), where it is remarked that "the Persians [at Artemisium] were minded not to let a single soul"

of the Greeks escape. The expression is, in general, a proverbial one, applied to utter destruction, especially in warfare. Its source is Greek, and lies in the custom of the Spartans (see Xenophon, Polity of the Lacedaemonians, chapter 13, section 2), which required the presence in their army of a priest carrying fire kindled at the shrine of Zeus the Leader, in Sparta, this sacred fire being absolutely essential to the proper conduct of important sacrifices. Victors would naturally spare such a priest on account of his sacred character; he regularly possessed the inviolability attaching also to heralds and envoys: and the proverb that represents him as being slain is (as Suidas notes) an effective bit of epigrammatic exaggeration. Other references to this proverb may be found (by those interested) in Rawlinson's note on the above pa.s.sage of Herodotos, in one of the scholia on the Phoenician Maidens of Euripides (verse 1377), in Sturz's Xenophontean Lexicon, in Stobaios's _Florilegium_ (XLIV, 41, excerpt from Nicolaos in Damascenos), in Zen.o.bios's _Centuria_ (V, 34), and finally in the dictionaries of Suidas and Hesychios.

The following slight variations as to the origin of the phrase are to be found in the above. The scholiast on Euripides states that in early times before the trumpet was invented, it was customary for a torch-bearer to perform the duties of a trumpeter. Each of any two opposing armies would have one, and the two priests advancing in front of their respective armies would cast their torches into the intervening s.p.a.ce and then be allowed to retire unmolested before the clash occurred. Zen.o.bios, a gatherer of proverbs, uses the word "seer" instead of priest. That the saying was an extremely common one seems to be indicated by the rather nave definition of Hesychios: _Fire-Bearer._ The man bearing fire. Also, the only man saved in war.

Of course, this may be simply the unskillful condensation of an authority.]

[Footnote 57: Reading [Greek: autas] (as Boissevain) in preference to [Greek: autous] ("upon them").]

[Footnote 58: About sixty miles. It is interesting to compare here Caesar's (probably less accurate) estimate of _thirty_ miles in his Gallic War (V, 2, 3).]

[Footnote 59: The exact time, daybreak, is indicated in Caesar's Gallic War, V, 31, 6.]

[Footnote 60: Compare Caesar's Gallic War, V, 54, 1.]

[Footnote 61: cp. Lx.x.x, 3.]

[Footnote 62: Verb supplied by Reiske.]

[Footnote 63: "Zeugma" signifies a "fastening together" (of boats or other material) to make a bridge.]

[Footnote 64: A gap here is filled by following approximately Bekker's conjecture.]

[Footnote 65: Verb supplied by Oddey.]

[Footnote 66: Twenty days according to Caesar's Gallic War (VII, 90).

Reimar thinks "sixty" an error of the copyists.]

[Footnote 67: The Words "of Marcus" were added by Leunclavius to make the statement of the sentence correspond with fact. Their omission would seem to be obviously due to haplography. The confusion about the relations.h.i.+p which might well have arisen by Dio's time, is very possibly the consequence of the idiomatic Latin "frater patruelis" used by Suetonius (for instance) in chapter 29 of his Life of Caesar. The two men were in fact, first cousins. Again in Appian (Civil Wars, Book Two, chapter 26), we read of "Claudius Marcellus, cousin of the previous Marcus." Both had the gentile name Claudius, one being Marcus Claudius, and the other Gaius Claudius, Marcellus.]

[Footnote 68: Small gaps occur in this sentence, filled by conjectures of Bekker and Reiske.]

[Footnote 69: Verb suggested by Xylander, Reiske, Bekker.]

[Footnote 70: Compare Book Thirty-seven, chapter 52.]

[Footnote 71: I.e., "Temple" or "Place of the Nymphs."]

[Footnote 72: This couplet is from an unknown play of Sophocles, according to both Plutarch and Appian. Plutarch, in his extant works, cites it three times (Life of Pompey, chapter 78; Sayings of Kings and Emperors, p. 204E; How a Young Man Ought to Hear Poems, chapter 12). In the last of these pa.s.sages he tells how Zeno by a slight change in the words alters the lines to an opposite meaning which better expresses his own sentiments. Diogenes Laertius (II, 8) relates a similar incident.

Plutarch says that Pompey quoted the verses in speaking to his wife and son, but Appian (Civil Wars, H, 85) that he repeated to himself.

The verses will be found as No. 789 of the Incertarum Fabularum Fragmenta in Nauck's _Tragici Graeci._]

[Footnote 73: _M. Acilius Caninus._]