[Footnote 242:  The Saturnalia were a kind of Carnival at Rome in the month of December, when people indulged themselves in feasting and revelry, and the slaves had the license of doing for a time what they pleased, and acting as if they were freemen.  The original “freedom of speech” may mean a little more than these words convey.  The point of the centurion’s remark, like many other jokes of antiquity, seems rather blunt.  He simply meant to express surprise at seeing slaves in an army serving as soldiers—­they whose only freedom, so far as he knew, was to have a little license once a year at the Saturnalia.]

[Footnote 243:  A town in Euboea on the strait of the Euripus which separates the island of Euboea from the mainland.  The smallness of the Roman loss is incredible.  Appian considerately add one to the number, and makes it fifteen (Mithridatic War, c. 42, &c.) Sulla was a braggart, though he was brave.]

[Footnote 244:  This stream is called Morius (c. 17).  Pausanias, who made his tour through Greece in the first half of the second century of our aera, saw the trophies (ix. 40).]

[Footnote 245:  L. Valerius Flaccus was elected consul B.C. 86 in the place of C. Marius, who died at the beginning of the year.]

[Footnote 246:  The name given by the Greeks and Romans to that part of the Mediterranean which lay between Dyrrachium (Durazzo) and the opposite coast of Italy.  Thucydides (i. 24) makes the Ionian Sea commence about Epidamnus (which was the old name of Dyrrachium), and probably he extended the name to all the Adriatic or modern Gulf of Venice.]

[Footnote 247:  A town in Phthiotis, a district which is included in Thessalia in the larger sense of that term.  It was on the river Enipeus, a branch of the Peneus. (Strabo, p. 452.) Thucydides (iv. 78) means the same place, when he speaks of Meliteia in Achaea.]

[Footnote 248:  A mountain in Boeotia and a spring (Tilphussa) about fifty stadia from Haliartus. (Pausanias, ix. 33.) Haliartus is on the south side of the Lake Kopais.]

[Footnote 249:  Orchomenus, one of the oldest towns in Boeotia and in Greece, is situated near the point where the Kephisus enters the great Lake.  Plutarch speaks again of the Melas in the Life of Pelopidas (c. 16).  Pausanias (ix. 88) says that the Melas rises seven stadia from Orchomenus, and enters the lake Kephisus, otherwise called Kepais.]

[Footnote 250:  If we assume that it was exactly two hundred years, Plutarch wrote this passage about A.D. 114, in the reign of Trajanus.  This battle was fought B.C. 86.  Hadrianus became emperor A.D. 117.  (See Preface, p. xiv.)]

[Footnote 251:  Cn.  Papirius Carbo was the colleague of Cinna in the consulship B.C. 85 and 84.]

[Footnote 252:  A Deliac merchant This might be a merchant of Delium, the small town in Boeotia, on the Euripus, where Sulla and Archelaus met.  But Delos, a small rocky island, one of the Cyclades, is probably meant Delos was at this time a great slave-market. (Strabo, p. 668.)]