double meaning. 10. namque: for, a strengthened nam.

_5._ This story is also told by Cicero, _De Oratore_, 2. 352 ff., and by
others. 1, 2. Quantum...superius: an earlier fable (4. 23) relates how
Simonides, shipwrecked and destitute, was received most hospitably by
one of his admirers. 4. Simonides: the renowned Greek lyric poet of
Ceos. His ode upon those who fell at Thermopylae was especially famous.
Sterling translates:

Of those who at Thermopylae were slain,
Glorious the doom, and beautiful the lot;
Their tomb an altar: men from tears refrain
To honor them; and praise, but mourn them not.
Such sepulchre nor drear decay
Nor all-destroying time shall waste; this right have they.
Within their grave the home-bred glory
Of Greece was laid; this witness gives
Leonidas, the Spartan, in whose story
A wreath of famous virtue ever lives.

5. pyctae: a word borrowed directly from the Greek. 8. poetae more:
poets who wrote odes in honor of victories at the games usually inserted
some legend containing an account of a similar victory won by a god or a
hero. 9. gemma Ledae pignera: Castor and Pollux, the latter famous as a
boxer. pignera: see _Lex_. II, B, 1. 10. auctoritatem...gloriae: citing
the authority of a like glory. 11, 12. tertiam partem: only a third. 13.
duae: sc. partes, two-thirds. 24. humanam supra formani: the gods and
heroes were 'divinely tall.' The diminutive servulo is in strong
contrast. 31. Ut...rei: When the incident was told just as it occurred.

Another story of divine interposition on the part of Castor and Pollux
is vividly told by Macaulay in _The Battle of Lake Regillus_.

_6._ Compare with Vergil's account of the oracle given by the Sibyl to
Aeneas, _Aeneid_, 6. 9 ff. Some of the more obvious resemblances in
diction and thought are _Aeneid_, 6. 12, 29, 35, 44, 45, 46 ff., 50, 95,
98, 99, 100.

1. Utilius: equalling a superlative, of highest value. 2. qui ff.:
Delphi was a city in north central Greece and Parnassus a mountain near
it. 4. tripodes: this probably means the golden seat above the cleft in
the ground in the adytum of Apollo's temple at Delphi. On this the
priestess (vates, 1. 3; virgo, 1. 16) sat to breathe the rising vapors
which induced the prophetic ecstasy. The tripus is named from being
supported on three legs. adytis: from [Greek: aduton], 'not to be
entered.' The adyta, or innermost parts of temples, were accessible only
to priests. 5. lauri: the laur