[1]: A civic crown was given to those who had saved the life of a citizen.
[2]: The compitalicii ludi, or compitalia, as they are called a few lines after, were a festival celebrated once a year in honour of the lares compitales, to whom sacrifices were offered at places where two ways met. It is said to have been instituted by Tarquinius Priscus, in honour of the birth of Servius Tullius, and Tarquinius Superbus is said to have sacrificed boys at them to Mania the mother of the Lares; but after his expulsion this custom was abolished, and the offerings were garlic and poppies. The exact day on which the games were celebrated varied, but it was always in the winter. In one of Cicero's letters to Atticus, (vii. 7,) he speaks of them as falling one year on the second of January. According to some editions the proper reading here is the thirtieth of December. Smith, Dict. Ant. p.279, v. Compitolia.
[3]: The Latin is bustuarius; literally, one who fights at the funeral pile in honour of the dead.
[4]: The Seplasia was a street at Capua, full of perfumers and hairdressers, and much frequented.
[5]: Duumvir was the title of the chief magistrate in the colonies and municipal towns in Italy.
[6]: The Latin is de lapide emptos, the lapis being a raised stone on which the praeco or auctioneer stood when slaves were sold with reference to which Plautus says: O stulte, stulte! nescis nunc venire te, In eo ipso slas lapide ubi praeco praedicat.
[7]: He refers here to the great victory of Paullus Aemilius, which was gained in this country over Perseus at Pydna.
[8]: The braccae, drawers or breeches, were the national costume of Gaul, especially of Gallia Narbonensis, which is called by Pliny Gallia Braccata.
[9]: Pomptinus had been praetor in Cicero's consulship; the next year he had subdued the Allobroges, but he did not celebrate his triumph till the year A.U.C. 700, in the consulship of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius Pulcher.
[10]: A Greek word signifying “is gone, perished.”
[11]: Themista is the name of a woman who devoted herself to the study of philosophy, to whom Epicurus wrote many of his letters.
[12]: There is great doubt about the text here.
[13]: There is great uncertainty about the true reading here.
[14]: This is from the Atreus of Accius.
[15]: The reader may as well be reminded that the Latin word caput, here and elsewhere translated life, means in reality, when employed, as here, in a legal sense, the civil privileges of a Roman citizen as well as his life, and they were destroyed by banishment as completely as by death.
[16]: There is great corruption of the text here.