on each
side, set apart for the use of the altar.--DAVIS.

[254] See Cicero de Divinatione, and Ovid. Fast.

[255] In the consulship of Piso and Gabinius sacrifices to Serapis and
Isis were prohibited in Rome; but the Roman people afterward placed
them again in the number of their gods. See Tertullian's Apol. and his
first book Ad Nationes, and Arnobius, lib. 2.--DAVIS.

[256] In some copies Circe, Pasiphae, and AEa are mentioned together;
but AEa is rejected by the most judicious editors.

[257] They were three, and are said to have averted a plague by
offering themselves a sacrifice.

[258] So called from the Greek word [Greek: thaumazo], to wonder.

[259] She was first called Geres, from _gero_, to bear.

[260] The word is _precatione_, which means the books or forms of
prayers used by the augurs.

[261] Cotta's intent here, as well as in other places, is to show how
unphilosophical their civil theology was, and with what confusions it
was embarrassed; which design of the Academic the reader should
carefully keep in view, or he will lose the chain of argument.

[262] Anactes, [Greek: Anaktes], was a general name for all kings, as
we find in the oldest Greek writers, and particularly in Homer.

[263] The common reading is Aleo; but we follow Lambinus and Davis, who
had the authority of the best manuscript copies.

[264] Some prefer Phthas to Opas (see Dr. Davis's edition); but Opas is
the generally received reading.

[265] The Lipari Isles.

[266] A town in Arcadia.

[267] In Arcadia.

[268] A northern people.

[269] So called from the Greek word [Greek: nomos], _lex_, a law.

[270] He is called [Greek: Opis] in some old Greek fragments, and
[Greek: Oupis] by Callimachus in his hymn on Diana.

[271] [Greek: Sabazios], Sabazius, is one of the names used for
Bacchus.

[272] Here is a wide chasm in the original. What is lost probably may
have contained great part of Cotta's arguments against the providence
of the Stoics.

[273] Here is one expression in the quotation from Caecilius that is not
commonly met with, which is _praestigias praestrinxit;_ Lambinus gives
_praestinxit_, for the sake, I suppose, of playing on words, because it
might then be translated, "He has deluded my delusions, or stratagems;"
but _praestrinxit_ is certainly the right reading.

[274] The ancient Romans had a judicial as well as a military praetor;
and he sat, with inferior judges attending him, like one of our
chief