[1]: In Sulla’s time the sestertius was a silver coin worth between two and three pence, or about five cents. The Attic drachma was a silver coin worth about eight pence, or twenty cents.
[2]: The sense of the obscure Greek is clear from chapter xxxvi. 1 fin. Capps suggests ὡς . . . . ὤν.
[3]: 107 B.C.
[4]: In his Memoirs. Cf. chapter vi. 5.
[5]: Phoenissae, 532 ff. (Kirchhoff).
[6]: He returned to Rome in 101 B.C., and was elected praetor in 93 B.C.
[7]: Not the dictator, who was only seven years old at this time.
[8]: 90-89 B.C., following the revolt of Rome’s Italian allies.
[9]: In 88 B.C.
[10]: In the seventy-seventh, one of the lost books.
[11]: Cf. chapter xiii. 1.
[12]: Sulla was occupied with the siege of Nola, in Campania.
[13]: The Greek of this sentence is acknowledged by all editors to be corrupt. The translation follows Coraës.
[14]: Plutarch must mean the Great Mother, Cybele. Cf. Themistocles, xxx. 1.
[15]: A place of public entertainment a few miles south of Rome (Strabo, v. 3, 9). The name has been substituted for the Picinae of the best MS., about which nothing is known.
[16]: In 87 B.C.
[17]: The gifts of Croesus, king of Lydia (Herodotus, i. 51).
[18]: Manius Acilius Glabrio, consul in 191 B.C., defeated Antiochus the Great at Thermopylae, and forced him to return to Asia.
[19]: Flamininus defeated Philip V. of Macedon at Cynoscephalae in 197 B.C., and Aemilius Paulus crushed Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, at Pydna, in 168 B.C. See Plutarch’s Flamininus, xv.; Aemilius Paulus, xvi.-xxii.
[20]: According to Appian, Bell. Civ. i. 71, Octavius, the consul, a supporter of Sulla, was killed at Rome by Censorinus, acting under the orders of Marius and Cinna, in 86 B.C. Valerius Flaccus, chosen consul to succeed Marius, in 86 B.C., was sent into Asia to thwart Sulla and conduct the war against Mithridates, but was murdered there by his mutinous lieutenant, Fimbria, in the following year. See chapters xx. 1; xxiii. 6; Lucullus, xxxiv. 2.
[21]: The Outer Cerameicus, i.e. the suburb before the Dipylon, or Sacred Gate, through which one left the city for Eleusis.
[22]: An unknown feature of the wall, somewhere between the Piraïc, or western gate, and the Dipylon, or Sacred Gate, opening to the N.W.
[23]: In Plutarch’s time.
[24]: 86 B.C. Cf. the description of the capture of Athens given by Appian, Bell. Mith. xxx.
[25]: In the time of Deucalion, the Noah of Greek tradition. (Cf. Pausanias, i. 18, 7.)
[26]: It must have been finished in 330-329 B.C. See Frazer on Pausanias, i. 1, 2.
[27]: One of the three harbours of the Piraeus.
[28]: At Thermopylae.
[29]: Cf. Herodotus, viii. 32.
[30]: As described in chapter xix.
[31]: Near Orchomenus, as described in chapter xxi.
[32]: Cf. chapter xvii. 3. Archelaüs had followed Sulla towards Chaeroneia.. leaving Murena free to join his chief.
[33]: The festival of Saturn, a time of general license and mirth, when masters treated their slaves as equals.
[34]: See chapter xvii. 7.
[35]: A deity of good fortune among the Romans.
[36]: So named because in it Oedipus washed off the blood of his murdered father (Pausanias, ix. 18, 4).
[37]: Cf. chapter xii. 3-6.
[38]: With Cinna, to succeed Marius, who died in 86 B.C.
[39]: The Boeotians excelled with the flute. See Alcibiades, ii. 4-6.
[40]: Plutarch must, therefore, have written this Life shortly before 115 A.D.
[41]: Elected consul with Cinna in 85 B.C.
[42]: See chapter xii. 8 and note.
[43]: In the late autumn of 88 B.C. The cities of Asia Minor were glad to obey the orders of Mithridates for a general massacre of the resident Romans. Cf. Appian, Mithridates, xxii. Valerius Maximus (ix. 2, 4, Ext. 3) gives the number slain as 80,000.
[44]: Cf. Lucullus, iv. 1.
[45]: Cf. Strabo, xiii. 1, 54. Scepsis was a city of the Troad, and a centre of learning under the Attalid dynasty of Pergamum. The writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus were hidden in an underground cellar by their owners, to keep them from being taken to Pergamum, and came in a damaged condition into the possession of Apellicon.
[46]: In some passage not now extant.
[47]: His fleet had sailed round Peloponnesus from Piraeus. According to Appian (Bell. Civ. i. 79), Sulla crossed from Patras to Brundisium.
[48]: In the spring of 83 B.C. The main part of his forces, at any rate, must have landed at Brundisium.
[49]: The typical triumphal crown.
[50]: In 83 B.C.
[51]: Cf. Publicola, xv. 1.
[52]: Cf. Plutarch’s Pompey, vi.-viii.
[53]: Cf. Plutarch’s Crassus, vi.
[54]: At the close of the Social war, in 89 B.C., the Samnites and Lucanians alone persisted in their hostility to Rome. The Marian party had conciliated them, but they regarded Sulla as their bitterest foe.
[55]: Both the circus (Flaminius) and the temple were in the Campus Martius.
[56]: A list of the persons proscribed was posted in public, and those whose names were on the list might be killed by anyone who chose to do it.
[57]: According to Appian (Bell. Civ. i. 94), as he was trying to escape from Praeneste by an underground passage.
[58]: In 81 B.C.
[59]: The title of Great was first bestowed on him by Sulla himself (cf. Pompey, xiii. 4).
[60]: Cf. Plutarch’s Pompey, ix. 2.
[61]: Cf. chapter xix. 5 and note.
[62]: Sulla restored the ancient powers of the senate, and reduced those of the tribunate. He resigned the dictatorship in 79 B.C.
[63]: Cf. Pompey, xv. 1 f.
[64]: On the death of Sulla, in 78 B.C., Lepidus headed an insurrection, and attempted to overthrow the constitution. Pompey adhered to the senatorial party (Cf. Pompey, xvi.
[65]: As they were in the time of Augustus.
[66]: Cf. chapter ii. 4.
[67]: B.C. 134; cf. Diodorus, xxxiv. 2, 23.
[68]: An earlier name for Puteoli.
[69]: Cf. chapter xxxiv. 3.
[70]: I.e. in the middle of the afternoon.