)
(8) That is, the liberty remaining to the people is destroyed by
speaking freely to the tyrant.
(9) That is, the gold offered by Pyrrhus, and refused by
Fabricius, which, after the final defeat of Pyrrhus, came
into the possession of the victors.
(10) See Plutarch, "Cato", 34, 39.
(11) It was generally believed that the river Alpheus of the
Peloponnesus passed under the sea and reappeared in the
fountain of Arethusa at Syracuse. A goblet was said to have
been thrown into the river in Greece, and to have reappeared
in the Sicilian fountain. See the note in Grote's "History
of Greece", Edition 1863, vol. ii., p. 8.)
(12) As a serpent. XXXXX is the Greek word for serpent.
(13) Conf. Book VI., 473.
(14) The Centaurs.
(15) Probably the flute thrown away by Pallas, which Marsyas
picked up and then challenged Apollo to a musical contest.
For his presumption the god had him flayed alive.
(16) That is, the Little Bear, by which the Phoenicians steered,
while the Greeks steered by the Great Bear. (See Sir G.
Lewis's "Astronomy of the Ancients", p. 447.) In Book VI.,
line 193, the pilot declares that he steers by the pole star
itself, which is much nearer to the Little than to the Great
Bear, and is (I believe) reckoned as one of the stars
forming the group known by that name. He may have been a
Phoenician.
(17) He did not in fact reach the Ganges, as is well known.
(18) Perhaps in allusion to the embassy from India to Augustus in
B.C. 19, when Zarmanochanus, an Indian sage, declaring that
he had lived in happiness and would not risk the chance of a
reverse, burnt himself publicly. (Merivale, chapter xxxiv.)
(19) That is to say, looking towards the west; meaning that they
came from the other side of the equator. (See Book IX.,
630.)
(20) See Book I., 117.
(21) A race called Heniochi, said to be descended from the
charioteer of Castor and Pollux.
(22) "Effusis telis". I have so taken this difficult expression.
Herodotus (7, 60) says the men were numbered in ten
thousands by being packed close together and having a circle
drawn round them. After the first ten thousand had been so
measured a fence was put where the circle had been, and the
subsequent ten thousands were driven into the enclosure. It
is not unlikely that they piled their weapons before being
so measur