Notes for Book II Chapter IX

1.  I. XV.  Earliest Hellenic Influences

2.  The account given by Dionysius (vi. 95; comp.  Niebuhr, ii. 40) and by Plutarch (Camill. 42), deriving his statement from another passage in Dionysius regarding the Latin festival, must be understood to apply rather to the Roman games, as, apart from other grounds, is strikingly evident from comparing the latter passage with Liv. vi. 42 (Ritschl, Parerg. i. p. 313).  Dionysius has—­and, according to his wont when in error, persistently—­misunderstood the expression -ludi maximi-.

There was, moreover, a tradition which referred the origin of the national festival not, as in the common version, to the conquest of the Latins by the first Tarquinius, but to the victory over the Latins at the lake Regillus (Cicero, de Div. i. 26, 55; Dionys. vii. 71).  That the important statements preserved in the latter passage from Fabius really relate to the ordinary thanksgiving-festival, and not to any special votive solemnity, is evident from the express allusion to the annual recurrence of the celebration, and from the exact agreement of the sum of the expenses with the statement in the Pseudo-Asconius (p. 142 Or.).

3.  II.  III.  Curule Aedileship

4.  I. II.  Art

5.  I. XV.  Metre

6.  I. XV.  Masks

7.  II.  VIII.  Police f.

8.  I. XV.  Melody

9.  A fragment has been preserved: 

-Hiberno pulvere, verno luto, grandia farra Camille metes-

We do not know by what right this was afterwards regarded as the oldest Roman poem (Macrob.  Sat. v. 20; Festus, Ep. v.  Flaminius, p. 93, M.; Serv. on Virg.  Georg, i. 101; Plin. xvii. 2. 14).

10.  II.  VIII.  Appius Claudius

11.  II.  VIII.  Rome and the Romans of This Epoch

12.  The first places in the list alone excite suspicion, and may have been subsequently added, with a view to round off the number of years between the flight of the king and the burning of the city to 120.

13.  I. Vi.  Time and the Occasion of the Reform, ii.  VII.  System of Government

14.  II.  VIII Rome and the Romans of This Epoch.  According to the annals Scipio commands in Etruria and his colleague in Samnium, and Lucania is during this year in league with Rome; according to the epitaph Scipio conquers two towns in Samnium and all Lucania.

15.  I. XI.  Jurisdiction, second note.

16.  They appear to have reckoned three generations to a hundred years and to have rounded off the figures 233 1/3 to 240, just as the epoch between the king’s flight and the burning of the city was rounded off to 120 years (ii.  IX.  Registers of Magistrates, note).  The reason why these precise numbers suggested themselves, is apparent from the similar adjustment (above explained, I. XIV.  The Duodecimal System) of the measures of surface.