-justices. _Sessum it praetor_, which I doubt not is the right
reading, Lambinus restored from an old copy. The common reading was
_sessum ite precor_.

[275] Picenum was a region of Italy.

[276] The _sex primi_ were general receivers of all taxes and tributes;
and they were obliged to make good, out of their own fortunes, whatever
deficiencies were in the public treasury.

[277] The Laetorian Law was a security for those under age against
extortioners, etc. By this law all debts contracted under twenty-five
years of age were void.

[278] This is from Ennius--

Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus
Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes.

Translated from the beginning of the Medea of Euripides--

[Greek: Med' en napaisi Pelion pesein pote
tmetheisa peuke.]

[279] Q. Fabius Maximus, surnamed Cunctator.

[280] Diogenes Laertius says he was pounded to death in a stone mortar
by command of Nicocreon, tyrant of Cyprus.

[281] Elea, a city of Lucania, in Italy. The manner in which Zeno was
put to death is, according to Diogenes Laertius, uncertain.

[282] This great and good man was accused of destroying the divinity of
the Gods of his country. He was condemned, and died by drinking a glass
of poison.

[283] Tyrant of Sicily.

[284] The common reading is, _in tympanidis rogum inlatus est_. This
passage has been the occasion of as many different opinions concerning
both the reading and the sense as any passage in the whole treatise.
_Tympanum_ is used for a timbrel or drum, _tympanidia_ a diminutive of
it. Lambinus says _tympana_ "were sticks with which the tyrant used to
beat the condemned." P. Victorius substitutes _tyrannidis_ for
_tympanidis_.

[285] The original is _de amissa salute;_ which means the sentence of
banishment among the Romans, in which was contained the loss of goods
and estate, and the privileges of a Roman; and in this sense L'Abbe
d'Olivet translates it.

[286] The forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid is
unanimously ascribed to him by the ancients. Dr. Wotton, in his
Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, says, "It is indeed a
very noble proposition, the foundation of trigonometry, of universal
and various use in those curious speculations about incommensurable
numbers."

[287] These votive tables, or pictures, were hung up in the temples.

[288] This passage is a fragment from a tragedy of Attius.

[289] Hipponax was a poet at Ephesus, an