The immediate cause of the Romans sending for the Great Mother was a heavy shower of stones at Rome, an occurrence which in those days was very common.  One might have supposed that one of the Roman aerolites would have answered as well as the stone of Pessinus, but the stone of Pessinus had the advantage of being consecrated by time and coming from a distance, and it was probably a large stone.  Cf.  Plut.  Lys. ch. 12.]

[Footnote 84:  This is Aix, about eighteen Roman miles north of Marseilles.  Places which were noted for warm springs or medicinal springs were called by the Romans Aquae, Waters, with some addition to the name.  The colony of Aquae Sextiae was founded by C. Sextius Calvinus B.C. 120, after defeating the Salyes or Saluvii, in whose country it was.  The springs of Aix fell off in repute even in ancient times, and they have no great name now; the water is of a moderate temperature.

Other modern towns have derived their name from the same word Aquae, which is probably the same as the Celtic word Ac or Acq.  There is an Aix in Savoy, and Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) in the Rhine Province of Prussia.  Sometimes the Aquae took a name from a deity.  In France there were the Aquae Bormonis, the waters of the God Bormo (Bourbonnes-les-Bains):  in England, Aquae Sulis, the Waters of the Goddess Sulis, which by an error became Solis in our books, as if they were called the waters of the Sun.  The inscriptions found at Bath name the goddess Sulia.]

[Footnote 85:  Plutarch means to say that the Ambrones and Ligurians were of one stock, and some writers conclude that they were both Celts.  This may be so or it may not, for evidence is wanting.  Of all the absurd parade of learning under which ancient history has been buried by modern critics, the weightiest and the most worthless part is that which labours to discover the relationship of people of whom we have only little, and that little often conflicting, evidence.]

[Footnote 86:  The Lar according to D’Anville, not the Arc.]

[Footnote 87:  Statements of numbers killed are not worth much, even in any modern engagements.  Velleius (ii. 12) makes the number of barbarians who fell in both battles above 150,000.]

[Footnote 88:  The Romans called it Massilia; now Marseilles.  It was an old Greek colony of the Phokaeans.  Strabo (p. 183) says that the people of Massilia aided the Romans in these battles and that Marius made them a present of the cut which he had formed from the Rhone to the sea, which the Massilians turned to profit by levying a toll on those who used it.]

[Footnote 89:  A Greek lyric poet who lived in the seventh century B.C.  His fragments have often been collected.]

[Footnote 90:  This was an old Roman fashion. (Livius, 1, c. 37; 41, c. 16.)]

[Footnote 91:  Plutarch often uses the word Fortune [Greek:  tuche], the meaning of which may be collected from the passages in which it occurs.  Nemesis [Greek:  Nemesis] is a Greek goddess, first mentioned by Hesiod, and often mentioned by the Greek Tragoedians.  She is the enemy of excessive prosperity and its attendant excessive pride and arrogance; she humbles those who have been elevated too high, tames their pride and checks their prosperous career.  Nemesis had a temple and statue at Rhamnus in Attica.]