P. 66. The City of Philosophers.—­This story has been translated into French by M. Sarrazin.

P. 68. There to establish a philosophic commonwealth.—­The petition was actually preferred, and would have been granted but for the disordered condition of the empire.  Gallienus, though not the man to save a sinking state, possessed the accomplishments which would have adorned an age of peace and culture.

P. 82. The sword doubled up; it had neither point nor edge.—­Gallienus was fond of such practical jocularity.  “Quum quidam gemmas vitreas pro veris vendiderat ejus uxori, atque illa, re prodita, vindicari vellet, surripi quasi ad leonem venditorem jussit.  Deinde e cavea caponem emittit, mirantibusque cunctis rem tam ridiculam, per curionem dici jussit, ‘Imposturam fecit et passus est’:  deinde negotiatorem dimisit” (Trebellius in Gallieno, cap. xii.).

P. 100. Hypati, anthypati, &c.—­Hypati and anthypati denote consuls and proconsuls, dignities of course merely titular at the court of Constantinople. Silentiarii were properly officers charged with maintaining order at court; but this duty, which was perhaps performed by deputy, seems to have been generally entrusted to persons of distinction.  The protospatharius was the chief of the Imperial body-guard, of which the spatharocandidati constituted the elite.

P. 114. The Wisdom of the Indians.—­Appeared in 1890 in The Universal Review.  The idea was suggested by an incident in Dr. Bastian’s travels in Burma.

P. 124. The Dumb Oracle.—­Appeared in the University Magazine for June, 1878.  The legend on which it is founded, a mediaeval myth here transferred to classical times, is also the groundwork of Browning’s ballad, “The Boy and the Angel.”

P. 136. Duke Virgil.—­The subject of this story is derived from Leopold Schefer’s novel, “Die Sibylle von Mantua,” though there is but little resemblance in the incidents.  Schefer cites Friedrich von Quandt as his authority for the Mantuans having actually elected Virgil as their duke in the thirteenth century:  but the notion seems merely founded upon the interpretation of the insignia accompanying a mediaeval statue of the poet.

P. 138. To put the devil into a hole.—­“Then sayd Virgilius, ’Shulde ye well passe in to the hole that ye cam out of?’ ‘Yea, I shall well,’ sayd the devyl.  ‘I holde the best plegge that I have, that ye shall not do it.’  ‘Well,’ sayd the devyll, ‘thereto I consent.’  And then the devyll wrange himselfe into the lytyll hole ageyne, and he was therein.  Virgilius kyvered the hole ageyne with the borde close, and so was the devyll begyled, and myght nat there come out agen, but abideth shutte still therein” ("Romance of Virgilius").

Ibid.  Canst thou balance our city upon an egg?—­“Than he thought in his mynde to founde in the middle of the sea a fayre towne, with great landes belongynge to it, and so he did by his cunnynge, and called it Napells.  And the foundacyon of it was of eggs” ("Romance of Virgilius").