Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
1 Consul A.U.C. 463; he is generally called Rufinus.—B.
2 This anecdote is mentioned by Cicero, De Nat. Deor. B. iii. c. 28, and by Valerius Maximus, B. i. c. 8.—B. He was tyrant of Pheræ and Tagus in Thessaly, and was finally assassinated.
3 He was consul A.U.C. 633; in consequence of the victories which he obtained over the Allobroges, he obtained the agnomen of "Allobrogicus."—B.
4 Valerius Maximus, B. viii. c. 13, refers to the great age of Xenophilus, but designates him "Pythagoræus;" he says that he obtained his information respecting him from Aristoxenus, the musician, which may have led to an inaccuracy on the part of Pliny. Poinsinet endeavours to reconcile the discrepancy, by the circumstance, that music formed a prominent part of the Pythagorean discipline.—B.
5 "Per sapientiam mori." Many conjectures have been formed respecting the meaning of this passage, which is obscure. Attempts have been made to amend the reading of the text, but; as it appears, without success; see the notes of Hardouin, Ajasson, and others, Lemaire, vol. iii. pp. 197, 8.—B. It is pretty clear, however, that Pliny here refers to what, in the next Chapter, he calls "sapientiæ ægritudo," the malady by the Greeks called "phrenesis," and by us "frenzy," which attacks the seat of wisdom, the understanding. Many pages have been written upon the meaning of this passage, obvious as it seems to be.
6 The same doctrine is advanced in B. xxviii., which treats of medicine, sec, c. 10.—B.
7 Among the ancients, all the manufactures and mechanical arts were carried on by slaves; they were, consequently, subjected to the same kinds of morbid causes which are found, in modern times, to be so detrimental to certain descriptions of workmen.—B.
8 Our own experience has taught us the truth of this observation in the case of the cholera; and the great plague of 1348, which is thought to have swept off one-third of mankind, is supposed to have travelled to Europe from the vicinity of the Ganges.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Click on a date to search for it in this document.