ΤΟ

paene miles: i.e. as contrasted with the Consul, who had the imperium; although the tribuni militum were the chief officers of the legion.

II hoc biennio: 'within these two years': i.e. before two years have passed. Although Scipio was Consul in 147, it was as pro-Consul that he conquered Carthage in 146,- —or almost three years from this date.

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cognomen: sc. Africani: according to Livy, xxxX. 45, after the precedent of the elder Africanus, many persons of less distinction were dignified by an additional cognomen (technically agnomen, in later Latin only), with which they ennobled their family: properly such distinctions were hereditary, at most, only by an extension of courtesy.

censor: B. C. 142, cp. de Orat. II. 272, Africanus censor tribu movebat eum centurionem, qui in Paulli pugna non affuerat; cum ille se custodiae caussa diceret in castris remansisse quaereretque cur ab eo notaretur: 'non amo', inquit, nimium diligentes'.

legatus: Cicero, Acad. pr. 11. 5, places the date of this mission before the censorship.

Asiam: Asia, like Africa (§ 1 n.), usually signified nothing more than that part of Asia Minor with some adjacent islands, which was formed into a Roman province, Asia Propria, on the death of Attalus.

iterum consul: B. C. 134.

By the lex Villia Annalis, the age

at which a Roman became eligible for the consulship was fixed at 43. It is therefore evident that Scipio was elected, for the first time, before the legal age, if he was really born B. C. 185 (§ 2 n.).

absens: this does not necessarily mean that he was really absent from Rome, but that he did not personally present himself as a candidate.

Numantiam: a city of Hisp. Tarraconensis, near the sources of the Douro. After an obstinate struggle to preserve its independence, in the course of which it more than once imposed capitulations upon the Roman commanders (e.g. Pompeius, pro-Consul, B. C. 140, Mancinus, Consul, 137), which were afterwards repudiated, it was

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finally captured by Scipio, B. C. 133, after a blockade of fifteen months, and ruthlessly destroyed. The famous Gaius Marius served with distinction in this his first campaign.

offendes: 'find': lit. 'knock against', 'hit upon': the radical signif. of the verb: cp. pedis offensio.

nepotis: Tiberius Gracchus, son of his daughter Cornelia. In the year B. C. 133, Gracchus, as Tribunus Plebis, succeeded in carrying an agrarian measure; the object of which was to distribute the ager publicus into small holdings: and in connexion with this, the treasure left by King Attalus was to be distributed among holders of allotments. This exasperated the nobles, who had encroached upon the public domain; and when Gracchus sought re-election as tribune, he was assassinated in a tumult headed by Scipio Nasica.

§ 4.

ancipitem: 'double': the one leading to the Dictatorship, &c., the other to an untimely end.

septenos: Scipio died B.C. 129, aged 56: i.e.in anno climacterico', as it is called; usually 63, i.e. 7×9, is styled the 'grand climacteric'.

amfractus reditusque : periphr. for annos: amfractus propter zodiaci ambitum, reditus quia eadem signa per annos singulos certa lege metitur'. Macrobius. Meissner remarks that the sun's orbit, according to the view of the ancients, is a spiral, in consequence of its twofold revolution (§ 9 n.). For reditus cp. de N. D. II. 40, sol modo accedens, tum autem recedens binas in singulis annis reversiones ab extremo contrarias facit:-i.e. the sun crosses the equator twice in each year.

plenus: Gk. Téλeos ȧpilμós. Cp. Plato, Timaeus, 39 D. The ancients imagined that certain virtues resided in particular numbers: Macrobius adduces many curious reasons for this: eg. 7 is a quarter of the lunar month and the cube of 2 is 8: cp. § 10, nodus n.

summam: 'the sum (of years) pertaining to thy destiny', i.e. the great crisis of thy life. Moser quotes Catil. 111. 4, fatalem hunc annum esse ad interitum huius urbis atque imperii. The climacterical years

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(i.e. 7 and its multiples) have always been supposed to be critical years in the human life.

convertet: an apparent antithet to converterit.

boni: 'good patriots': i.e. as elsewhere in Cicero, the optimates. 26 socii: the term Socii et Latini comprehends the Italians generally. As the ager publicus had been originally confiscated from their territory, and was in some cases still farmed by them, they naturally regarded the prospect of its distribution with envy and dismay. Scipio, on his return from Numantia, was induced to take up their cause and became their patronus: thus arraying himself against that faction which endeavoured to prosecute the agrarian reforms of Tiberius Gracchus without regard for the interest of the Italians. In the disputes which ensued, Carbo tried to embarrass Scipio by pointedly asking, what he thought of the murder of his kinsman Gracchus. The answer: iure caesum, 'lawfully slain'; the only answer possible, from the stern disciplinarian, who would regard all disturbers of public order as mutineers,—coupled with the supposed jealousy of his wife Sempronia,—was afterwards held to give colour to the suspicion that Scipio was murdered by his wife's relations. But, as Gaius Gracchus, after Scipio's death, supported the claims of the Socii; and as Laelius, Scipio's bosom friend, was, at least for a time, in favour of agrarian reform, it is more likely that Scipio's sudden death was used by the Optimates in invidiam, to discredit the Gracchan party: certain it is that no public inquiry was held; as there would have been if any plausible pretext could have been found. Laelius himself is said to have attributed Scipio's death to natural causes (Schol. Vat. ad Milon., cp. Velleius, 11. 4).

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ne multa: sc. dicam, à customary ellipse.

constituas: 'establish, set in order': cp. the Greek phrase kalɩoτάναι τὰ πράγματα.

Mai cites Cicero, de Off. I. xxx. 103, in eius familiari Scipione ambitio maior, vita tristior, as evidence that Scipio himself probably aspired to the Dictatorship; but it is more likely, as Cicero puts it here, that the eyes of all parties in the State spontaneously turned towards Scipio, as the one man, who, both from his high reputation and the freedom from complications of party, which his employment

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abroad in the service of his country might be presumed to have allowed him to maintain, was least likely to exercise these extraordinary powers for furthering the ends of any particular party. Certainly nothing was more natural than that a Dictator should be called for, at a time when civil war was imminent.

impias: 'unnatural': impius is one who violates those duties, viz. towards God, kinsfolk, or fatherland, which the laws of nature impose upon men (cp. § 8 pietatem): manus, like Gk. xeîpes (in the phrase apxew xeiρŵv ȧdikwv), occasionally='violent assaults'.

Laelius: Gaius Laelius Sapiens, the friend of the younger, as his father before him of the elder Africanus: his traditional friendship for Scipio as well as the desire to pay a tribute to the memory of his friend and preceptor, Scaevola, the augur, who had married one of the daughters of Laelius, suggested to Cicero the idea of assigning to him the principal part in the dialogue entitled 'Laelius sive de Amicitia'.

eos cet.

parumper: cp. Rep. 1. vii. 12, dent operam parumper atque audiant, Some read pax sit rebus, for parumper (MSS have parum rebus): the Greek interpreter renders ἀλλ ̓ εἰρήνη ἔστω τοῖς πράγ paow: pax sit rebus is found also in inferior MSS.

§ 5, P. 15.

2 sic habeto: 'believe thou this': habeo has frequently this force of 'believing or being convinced', as in the phrase pro certo habere: the strengthened form of the imperative, sometimes called Future Imp., is especially common with light or monosyllabic verbs, e.g. těneto, scito.

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auxerint: figuratively='aggrandise', 'do honour to': cp. Gk.

αὔξω.

beati probably euphem. for post mortem, like oi μaкápio, by which Planudes renders it in the Greek translation.

quod fiat: 'the conjunctive is used in relative propositions, which limit something that is stated in general terms to a certain defined class'. Madvig, L. G. 365. 2. Cp. quod sciam, ‘so far as I know'.

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iure sociati: a Stoic definition of civitas: cp. de Rep. I. xxv. 39, est respublica res populi; populus autem non omnis hominum coetus quoquo modo congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis, iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus. Cp. de Legg. I. xv. 42. For the attraction of the relative in quae civitates, cp. § 13 n., quem Oceanum.

hinc profecti: cp. Tuscul. 1. 118, in aeternam et plane in nostram domum remigremus.

According to the Stoics, the souls of men were of the same ethereal essence as the soul of the Universe, the mens divina; this they supposed to bear the same relation to the matter of the Universe as the souls of men bear to their bodies. In § 9 we are told that the sublunar regions are the sphere of transition and mortality; while above the moon everything is eternal; and as fire, which was their idea of the ethereal essence, struggles to break through the matter which confines it, and to soar upwards; so the soul strives with the body, seeking to be released from it and to fly back to the region of the eternal, § 21.

§ 6.

Paulus: L. Aemilius P., Macedonicus, son of the noble Paulus, who fell at Cannae; in his 2nd Consulship, B.C. 168, he brought the Macedonian war to a close by defeating Perseus, the last king of Macedon, near Pydna. He was one of the few Roman victors who won for themselves nothing but glory from their conquests. Probably the honourable poverty of this noble house, as well as the careful education, which Paulus is said to have bestowed upon his children, accounts for the fact that his two sons were adopted by the representatives of such illustrious houses as Scipio Africanus and Fabius Maximus.

immo vero: 'in very truth': in-mo, an ablative from a superlative derivat. of in (cp. sum-mus, de-mum) = German 'im innersten' (Vanicek, Etymol.): like Greek μèv oûv=‘nay rather', immo is used in replies, where a statement is rejected, or accepted with corrections.

vinculis: Plato is fond of this metaphor: hence the fanciful derivations, not always serious, of σῶμα from σήμα sepulcrum, or σώζεσ Oa, custodiri; déμas from deoμós. Cp. Plato, Cratyl. 400 B, Gorg. 493 A, Phaedo, 67 D; Cic. Lael. IV. 14.