67 Epicurus is meant here, who was then living: for Laertius says, he was born the third year of the one hundred and ninth Olympiad, seven years after Plato's death, and died in the second of the one hundred and twenty-seventh Olympiad, in the seventy-second year of his age: he therefore must have lived nine years after Pyrrhus's expedition into Italy. Epicurus had in his own time a very ill character given him by the philosophers of other sects, and the same has through all succeeding ages stuck to him; but many think him much wronged. His physics, or opinions of nature, were grossly absurd in many things, but his morals that are so much decried, were very different from what they are generally accounted. He proposed pleasure, it is true, for the end of action; but that pleasure was to consist in the tranquillity of the mind, and inward satisfaction, and not in voluptuous enjoyments: for he is said to have been perfectly temperate himself, and that all his doctrine tended to the same. He wrote much, but nothing of his remains, save what Laertius had in his tenth book, which is wholly bestowed on his life and doctrine. Gassendus explained it in some large volumes.

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68 Publius Decius Mus, was the first time consul in the four hundred and forty-second year of Rome; and this fourth time, when he fell, was in the four hundred and fifty-ninth. The two consuls Quintus Fabius Maximus [there were divers from time to time of that name of the same family] being the fifth time consul, and this Decius (as has been noted) the fourth, were engaged in a doubtful and almost desperate battle with the Gauls and Samnites; with whom two other nations, the Etrurians (or Tuscans) and the Umbrians, were also at the same time confederates against Rome. When the fight had continued long, nearly equal on both sides, and at length the Gauls made some impression on the left wing where Decius commanded, and his men began to break and fly, nor could he by any means restrain them; invoking his father's name, who had before devoted himself, he called to him the pontiff that attended,

to repeat to him the form to be used in devoting; which he took in the same manner his father had done, and in the same manner also the Romans got the day: for the flying forces, hearing what their general had done, rallied of themselves, and with new spirits vigorously attacked their enemies, and bore all before them.-To devote one, is to offer him up as accursed, an atoning sacrifice, for the safety of others: and the method of it is curious enough to render it worth knowing. We have it particularly in Livy, in his account of this Decius his father devoting himself, [lib. 8. c. 9.] in the 414th year of Rome; and it was thus the Romans and the Latins after a long alliance differing, they drew out equal forces and engaged. Victory inclining to neither side, and one of the consuls, Decius, almost despairing of it, resolved on a desperate action, which he hoped might secure it. He called on the pontiff who was with him, to repeat before him the solemn form of devoting; for he would offer himself up, he said, as an atonement for the army. The pontiff ordered him to put on the civic gown; and covering his head, he put up his hand within his gown under his chin, and treading on a weapon, to repeat these words after him: "O Janus, Jupiter, father Mars, Quirinus, Bellona! Ye home gods, foreign gods, indigetes, and lower gods, who have us and our enemies in your power! and ye infernal gods! I pray, adore, and beseech you, that you will make good and prosper, and give strength and victory to the Roman people; that you will confound, terrify, and put to death the enemies of the Romans! as I have now conceived in words, so, for the public weal, army, legions, and auxiliaries of the Roman people, I devote, or [accurse] the legions and auxiliaries of their enemies, together with myself, to the infernal gods, and to the earth." This done, he sent notice of it to the other consul T. Manlius. Then putting on his armor and mounting his horse, he rode into the thickest of the enemy, and carried destruction before him, till he was cut in pieces: which was one necessary part of the ceremony; for with

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out it, all the rest would have been void. And therefore when this man's grandson, Publius Decius, being consul with Sulpicius, in the second battle the Romans had with Pyrrhus; and it was reported, that he, after his grandfather's and father's example, would also devote himself; Pyrrhus apprehensive lest it might give some terror to his men, sent word to the consul, that he should leave of fooling; for that he would take order, if he attempted it, to disappoint him, he should not fall in that manner in the field, but meet with a death less to his liking. did, however, nor had proposed to attempt it. and Plutarch in Pyrrhus.

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He neither Livy, lib. 8.

69 The Romans having had great success for four years against the Carthaginians, in their first war with them, by land; but lying exposed to them by sea, as having no fleet, resolved to build one; and ordered the consuls, of whom this Duillius was one, to proceed to the work; and in sixty days (Livy says) after the timber was fallen, they had [incredible] one hundred and sixty ships of war completed and at anchor to furnish which with men, those designed for the service, were taught all the motions and management of oars, in which, while their ships were building, they were exercised on shore. But finding on trial these ships much more unwieldy than those of their enemies; to balance this, they contrived an engine placed at their heads, by which, when closed in with another ship, they would grapple and hold her so fast, that she could not possibly get clear. They framed also on the engine a kind of platform to stand on, and enter other ships by it. Thus they fought at sea, as if they had been on land, hand to hand with their enemies and in the first engagement, Duillius sunk fourteen ships, killing three thousand men, and took thirty-one ships more, with seven thousand prisoners; for which he triumphéd.

70 Commonly called Idea mater, the Idæan mother. In the 549th year of Rome, a little before Annibal left Italy,

the Roman armies were seized with so violent a sickness, that they were in danger of being all lost; nor were the Carthaginians clear from it: and about the same time dreadful prodigies from the heavens were seen, as raining stones (of which we hear so often in their history, that we may reasonably believe they must have meant only large hail by it; for they accounted even great thunder-storms a denunciation of the anger of their gods.) Those who had the Sibylls books in keeping, consulting them on these calamities, said, they found an oracle there, declaring, that when a foreign enemy should invade Italy, the country might be delivered from them, if the Idæan mother were brought from Pessinus to Rome. This was a place in Phrygia in Asia Minor. And for this the Romans fitted out five large ships, with a solemn embassy to Attalus, the king of those parts, to request the favor. They took the oracle of Delphi in their way, to consult that also, and know their success; the answer was favorable, further telling them, "The worthiest man of Rome must be appointed to receive the goddess into the city." Attalus, to oblige the Romans, though they had then no intercourse with Asia, granted their request; and shewed them a great stone, which the inhabitants called by that name: and they brought her divinity to the river Tiber, where Scipio Nassica was appointed, as the best man in Rome, to receive her. Thus Livy, b. 29. c. 10, &c. Herodian, who wrote the history of the reigns of ten emperors, about the year of Christ 240, in the life of Commodus, tells a long story of that goddess, and the devotion yearly paid her at Rome: He says, the image was framed by no mortal hands, but sent down. from heaven by Jupiter; that the ship that brought her, sticking fast in the river Tiber, a vestal virgin, who was accused of unchastity, to prove her innocence, hauled the ship along, only by her girdle. But Livy writing the history of the time, says nothing of this: for miracles are often best known some centuries after they are said to have been wrought.

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71 In Xenophon's works there is a tract called the Symposion, or feast, consisting of the pleasant discourses of the guests; which is more natural than that of Plato's.

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72 Turpio Ambivius was a famous actor in Rome, about the five hundred and ninetieth year of the city. He is mentioned in what is called the Didescalia, of four of the six comedies we have of Terence, to have been the principal actor of them.

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73 Caius Sulpicius Gallus, the first of the Romans [Pliny says, lib. 2. c. 12.] who applied himself to the study of the stars, in which he was very famous. Being tribunus militum in the army commanded by Paulus Æmilius, the day before the great battle, in which Perseus king of Macedon was defeated, and his kingdom thereupon made a province, [see note 24] he gave public notice to the army, that the ensuing evening the moon would be eclipsed and darkened from the second to the fourth hour, [that was then, from near ten to near twelve at night in our account] and as this could be foretold, by the knowlege only of the course and motions of the sun and moon, they should not therefore be surprised at it, or account it a prodigy. But the Macedonians, it seems, where not so happy, as to have such a skilful adviser amongst them; for the eclipse happened accordingly, and the Greeks were much terrified. Livy, who [lib. 44. c. 37.] relates this, says, it was the night before the fourth of September, which both Calvisius and Petavius having calculated, find to have fallen on the twentyfirst of June, one hundred and sixty-eight years before Christ, according to our present account; for the Roman calendar was at that time, for the reasons given by Censorinus [cap. 20.] exceedingly perplexed and uncertain, till Julius Cæsar in his third consulate, being then also Pontifex Maximus, forty-five years before Christ, regulated it, and established our present Julian account. This Sulpicius Gallus, two years after that battle, was consul himself and