Ptolemy
Lathyrus (the Vetch).

The Romans used this sort of name much more commonly, as for instance
they named one of the Metelli Diadematus, or wearer of the diadem,
because he walked about for a long time with his head bound up because
of a wound in the forehead.

Another of the same family was named Celer (the Swift), because of the
wonderful quickness with which he provided a show of gladiators on the
occasion of his father's funeral. Some even to the present day derive
their names from the circumstances of their birth, as for instance a
child is named Proculus if his father be abroad when he is born, and
Postumus if he be dead. If one of twins survive, he is named Vopiscus.
Of names taken from bodily peculiarities they use not only Sulla (the
Pimply), Niger (the Swarthy), Rufus (the Red-haired), but even such as
Caecus (the Blind), and Claudus (the Lame), wisely endeavouring to
accustom men to consider neither blindness nor any other bodily defect
to be any disgrace or matter of reproach, but to answer to these names
as if they were their own. However, this belongs to a different branch
of study.

XII. When the war was over, the popular orators renewed the
party-quarrels, not that they had any new cause of complaint or any just
grievance to proceed upon; but the evil result which had necessarily
been produced by their former riotous contests were now made the ground
of attacks on the patricians. A great part of the country was left
unsown and untilled, while the war gave no opportunities for importation
from other countries. The demagogues, therefore, seeing that there was
no corn in the market, and that even if there had been any, the people
were not able to buy it, spread malicious accusations against the rich,
saying that they had purposely produced this famine in order to pay off
an old grudge against the people. At this juncture ambassadors arrived
from the town of Velitrae, who delivered up their city to the Romans,
desiring that they would send some new inhabitants to people it, as a
pestilence had made such havoc among the citizens that there was
scarcely a tenth part of them remaining alive.

The wiser Romans thought that this demand of the people of Velitrae
would confer a most seasonable relief on themselves, and would put an
end to their domestic troubles, if they could only transfer the more
violent partizans of the popular party thither, and so purge the State
of its more disorderly elements. Th