Plutarch's Lives Volume II Part 19

[Footnote 210: The Peiraeus, one of the chief ports of Athens, is often used to express the maritime city generally and the lower city, as opposed to Athens, which was called the Upper City. The two cities were united by the Long Walls, about four miles in length.]

[Footnote 211: The Academia, one of the suburbs of Athens, was planted with trees, among others with the olive. It was on the north-west side of the city. In the Academia there was a Gymnasium, or exercise place, and here also Plato delivered his lectures; whence the name Academy pa.s.sed into use as a term for a University (in the sense of a place of learning) in the Middle Ages, and has now other significations. The Lycaeum was another similar place on the east side of Athens.]

[Footnote 212: This was Epidaurus on the east coast of Argolis in the Peloponnesus, which contained a temple of aesculapius, the G.o.d of healing. Olympia on the Alpheius, in Elis, contained the great temple of Jupiter and immense wealth, which was acc.u.mulated by the offerings of many ages. This and other temples were also used as places of deposit for the preservation of valuable property. Pausanias (v. 21, vi. 19, and in other pa.s.sages) has spoken at great length of the treasures of Olympia. These rich deposits were a tempting booty to those who were in want of money and were strong enough to seize it. At the commencement of the Peloponnesian war (B.C. 431) it was proposed that the Peloponnesian allies should raise a fleet by borrowing money from the deposits at Olympia and Delphi (Thucydides, i. 121), a scheme which the Athenians, their enemies, appear to have looked upon as a mode of borrowing of which repayment would form no part. (i. 143.

[Greek: eite kai kinesantes] e?te ?a? ????sa?te?, &c.). Many of the rich churches in Italy were plundered by the French during their occupation of Italy in the Revolutionary wars; their search after valuables extended to very minute matters. The rich stores of the Holy House of the Virgin at Loreto were nearly exhausted by Pope Pius VI.

in 1796 to satisfy the demands of the French. It is said that there is a new store got together for the next invader.]

[Footnote 213: The history of this ancient body cannot be given with any accuracy except in detail. (See the article "Amphictyons," _Penny Cyclopaedia_.) The "royal presents" were the gifts of Crsus, king of Lydia (in the sixth century B.C.) the most munificent of all the donors to the temple. Among his other presents Herodotus (i. 51) mentions four of these silver casks or jars, and he uses the same word that Plutarch does. The other three had probably been taken by some previous plunderer. In the Sacred war (B.C. 357) the Phokians under Philomelus took a large part of the valuable things at Delphi for the purpose of paying their troops. (Diodorus, xvi. 30.)]

[Footnote 214: Flamininus, whose life Plutarch has written under the name of Flaminius, defeated Philip V. king of Macedonia B.C. 197.

Manius Acilius Glabrio, who was consul B.C. 191, defeated in that year Antiochus III. king of Syria, commonly called the Great, at Thermopylae in Greece. Antiochus afterwards withdrew into Asia. aemilius Paulus defeated Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, at Pydna B.C. 168, upon which Macedonia was reduced into the form of a Roman Province (Livius, 45, c. 18.). Plutarch has written the Life of Paulus aemilius.]

[Footnote 215: See the Life of Marius, c. 42.]

[Footnote 216: See c. 20, 21. C. Flavius Fimbria was the legatus of the consul L. Valerius Flaccus. Cicero (_Brutus_, 66) calls him a madman.]

[Footnote 217: The Medimnus was a dry measure, reckoned at 11 gallons 7.1456 pints English. It was equivalent to six Roman modii. (Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_.)]

[Footnote 218: This plant may have had its name from the virgin (parthenos) G.o.ddess Athene, whom the Romans call Minerva. Plinius (_N.H. 22_, c. 20) has described it. It is identified with the modern feverfew by Smith in Rees' _Cyclopaedia_,--a plant of the chamomile kind; rather unpleasant for food, as one might conjecture. The oil-flasks were of coa.r.s.e leather. In Herodotus (ix. 118) we read of a besieged people eating their bedcords, which we may a.s.sume to have been strips of hides, or leather at least.]

[Footnote 219: For all matters relating to the topography of Rome and Athens, the reader must consult a plan: nothing else can explain the text. The gate called Dipylum or Double-Gate was the pa.s.sage from the Keramicus within the walls to the Keramicus outside of the walls on the north-west side of Athens.]

[Footnote 220: Teius is not a Roman name. It is conjectured that it should be Ateius.]

[Footnote 221: The road from Athens to Eleusis was called the Sacred (Pausanius, i. 36): it led to the sacred city of Eleusis. The s.p.a.ce between the Peiraeic gate and the Sacred is that part of the wall which lay between the roads from Athens to the Piraeus and Eleusis respectively.]

[Footnote 222: A Greek Agora corresponds to a Roman Forum.]

[Footnote 223: The description of the capture of Athens is given by Appian. (_Mithridatic War_, c. 30.) Plutarch here alludes to the deluge in the time of Deucalion, which is often mentioned by the Greek and Roman writers. In the time of Pausanias (i. 18), in the second century of our aera, they still showed at Athens the hole through which the waters of the deluge ran off. A map of the Topography of Athens has been published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Leake's _Topography of Athens_, K.O. Muller, in Ersch und Gruber, _Encyclop._ art. "Attika," p. 223, and P.W. Forchhammer, _Topographie von Athen_, 1841, should be consulted.]

[Footnote 224: See Strabo, p. 395.]

[Footnote 225: One of the ports of the maritime town of Athens. The events mentioned in this chapter should be compared with Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 41).]

[Footnote 226: His name was Lucius, and he was probably a brother of the great Hortensius. L. Hortensius had to pa.s.s through a difficult country to reach Botia. His route lay through the straits of Thermopylae; but he probably took some other line, and he was conducted by Kaphis over the heights of the great mountain ma.s.s of Parna.s.sus.

Kaphis appears to be the person of the same name who has been mentioned before (c. 12), though he is there called a Phokian. In this chapter Plutarch calls him a Chaeroneian. t.i.thora or t.i.th.o.r.ea was in the time of Herodotus (viii. 32) the name of that summit of Parna.s.sus to which the Phokians of the neighbouring town of Neon fled from the soldiers of Xerxes B.C. 480. Pausanias (x. 32) remarks that the city Neon must have taken the name of t.i.th.o.r.ea after the time of Herodotus.

But Plutarch means to say that the t.i.thora of which he speaks was the place to which the Phokians fled; and therefore Neon, the place from which they fled, cannot be t.i.thora, according to Plutarch; and the description of t.i.th.o.r.ea by Herodotus, though very brief, agrees with the description of Plutarch. Pausanias places t.i.th.o.r.ea eighty stadia from Delphi.]

[Footnote 227: Elateia was an important position in Phokis and near the river Kephisus. It was situated near the north-western extremity of the great Botian plain, and commanded the entrance into that plain from the mountainous country to the north-west. The Kephisus takes a south-east course past Elateia, Panopeus, Chaeronea, and Orchomenus, and near Orchomenus it enters the Lake Kopais. Botia is a high table-land surrounded by mountains, and all the drainage of the plain of which those of Elateia and Orchomenus are part is received in the basin of the lake, which has no outlet.]

[Footnote 228: This city was burnt by Xerxes in his invasion of Greece B.C. 480. (Herodotus, viii. 33.) Pausanias (x. 33) says that it was not rebuilt by the Botians and Athenians: in another pa.s.sage (x. 3) he says it was destroyed by Philip after the close of the Sacred or Phokian war B.C. 346; and therefore it had been rebuilt by somebody.]

[Footnote 229: The soldiers who had s.h.i.+elds of bra.s.s.]

[Footnote 230: This was Aulus Gabinius, who was sent by Sulla B.C. 81 with orders to L. Licinius Murena to put an end to the war with Mithridates. Ericius is not a Roman name: perhaps it should be Hirtius.]

[Footnote 231: This is Juba II., king of Mauritania, who married Cleopatra, one of the children of Marcus Antonius by Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Juba was a scholar and an author: he is often quoted, by Strabo, Plinius (_Nat Hist._), and other writers.]

[Footnote 232: "Our city" will explain why Plutarch has described the campaign in the plains of Botia at such length. Plutarch's battles are none of the best; and he has done well in making them generally short.]

[Footnote 233: The cave of Trophonius was at Lebadeia in Botia.

Pausanias (ix. 39) has given a full account of the singular ceremonies used on consulting the deity.]

[Footnote 234: The word is [Greek: omphes] ?f??, literally "voice,"

which has caused a difficulty to the translators; but the reading is probably right.]

[Footnote 235: This was Lucius Licinius Murena, who conducted the war against Mithridates in Asia B.C. 83 as Propraetor. He was the father of the Lucius Murena in whose defence we have an extant oration of Cicero.]

[Footnote 236: The old story is well told by Ovidius (_Metamorphoses,_ iii. 14, &c.)]

[Footnote 237: A temple of the Muses.]

[Footnote 238: Kaltwa.s.ser has followed the reading "Gallus" in his version, though, as he remarks in a note, this man is called Galba by Appian (_Mithridat. War_, 43), and he is coupled with Hortensius, just as in Plutarch.]

[Footnote 239: This clumsy military contrivance must generally have been a failure. These chariots were useless in the battle between Cyrus and his brother Artaxerxes B.C. 401. (Xenophon, _Anabasis_, i.

8.) Appian (_Mithridatic War_, c. 42) mentions sixty of these chariots as being driven against the Romans, who opened their ranks to make way for them: the chariots were surrounded by the Roman soldiers in the rear and destroyed.]

[Footnote 240: A Circus was a Roman racecourse. The chief circus was the Circus Maximus, which was used also for hunts of wild beasts. See the article "Circus" in Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_.]

[Footnote 241: I have kept the Greek word ([Greek: hoplites] ?p??t??), which means a soldier who was equipped with defensive armour for close fighting.]

[Footnote 242: The Saturnalia were a kind of Carnival at Rome in the month of December, when people indulged themselves in feasting and revelry, and the slaves had the license of doing for a time what they pleased, and acting as if they were freemen. The original "freedom of speech" may mean a little more than these words convey. The point of the centurion's remark, like many other jokes of antiquity, seems rather blunt. He simply meant to express surprise at seeing slaves in an army serving as soldiers--they whose only freedom, so far as he knew, was to have a little license once a year at the Saturnalia.]

[Footnote 243: A town in Euba on the strait of the Euripus which separates the island of Euba from the mainland. The smallness of the Roman loss is incredible. Appian considerately add one to the number, and makes it fifteen (_Mithridatic War_, c. 42, &c.) Sulla was a braggart, though he was brave.]

[Footnote 244: This stream is called Morius (c. 17). Pausanias, who made his tour through Greece in the first half of the second century of our aera, saw the trophies (ix. 40).]

[Footnote 245: L. Valerius Flaccus was elected consul B.C. 86 in the place of C. Marius, who died at the beginning of the year.]

[Footnote 246: The name given by the Greeks and Romans to that part of the Mediterranean which lay between Dyrrachium (Durazzo) and the opposite coast of Italy. Thucydides (i. 24) makes the Ionian Sea commence about Epid.a.m.nus (which was the old name of Dyrrachium), and probably he extended the name to all the Adriatic or modern Gulf of Venice.]

[Footnote 247: A town in Phthiotis, a district which is included in Thessalia in the larger sense of that term. It was on the river Enipeus, a branch of the Peneus. (Strabo, p. 452.) Thucydides (iv. 78) means the same place, when he speaks of Meliteia in Achaea.]

[Footnote 248: A mountain in Botia and a spring (Tilphussa) about fifty stadia from Haliartus. (Pausanias, ix. 33.) Haliartus is on the south side of the Lake Kopais.]

[Footnote 249: Orchomenus, one of the oldest towns in Botia and in Greece, is situated near the point where the Kephisus enters the great Lake. Plutarch speaks again of the Melas in the Life of Pelopidas (c.

16). Pausanias (ix. 88) says that the Melas rises seven stadia from Orchomenus, and enters the lake Kephisus, otherwise called Kepais.]

[Footnote 250: If we a.s.sume that it was exactly two hundred years, Plutarch wrote this pa.s.sage about A.D. 114, in the reign of Traja.n.u.s.

This battle was fought B.C. 86. Hadria.n.u.s became emperor A.D. 117.

(See Preface, p. xiv.)]

[Footnote 251: Cn. Papirius Carbo was the colleague of Cinna in the consuls.h.i.+p B.C. 85 and 84.]

[Footnote 252: A Deliac merchant This might be a merchant of Delium, the small town in Botia, on the Euripus, where Sulla and Archelaus met. But Delos, a small rocky island, one of the Cyclades, is probably meant Delos was at this time a great slave-market. (Strabo, p. 668.)]

[Footnote 253: Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 50) says that Archelaus hid himself in a marsh, and afterwards made his escape to Chalkis.

Sulla's arrogance is well characterized by his speech. The Cappadocians were considered a mean and servile people, and their character became proverbial.]