69 Dellius] Quintus Dellius, to whom Horace addresses Od. ii., 3. He deserted from Dolabella to Cassius, from Cassius to Antony, and from Antony to Cæsar. Sen. Suasor., i. The text is here imperfect, and a few words are omitted in the translation.
70 By her name] Nomine. Not saluting her as a queen, but calling her merely Cleopatra.
71 LXXXVIII. Fully contented with the narrow purple] The text has angusti clavi pene contentus, which is manifestly corrupt, for any trustworthy example of contentus with a genitive is not to be found. Ruhnken thinks that pene is a corruption of some substantive. The Basil editor gives angusto clavo. For pene, Krause proposes bene or planè. The angustus clavus was the badge of a knight.
72 Calpurnia — mentioned above] See c. 26.
73 XCII. By primitive strictness and the greatest firmness of mind] Priscâ severitate et summâ constantiâ. The words which follow these, vetere consulum more ac severitate, are not translated, being, as Krause observes, a manifest interpolation.
74 XCIV. Artavasdes, &c.] There is here a hiatus in the text. The words in brackets are a suggestion of Lipsius.
75 XCVII. Unassuming demeanour] Par sui æstimatio. “Just estimation of himself.”
76 C. Julius Antonius] Son of Mark Antony, by Fulvia.
77 CIII. That he was all in all to every one] Quàm in illo [omnia] omnibus fuerint. “How much all things were in him for all.” The omnia is an insertion of Krause’s, borrowed by him from Lipsius’s conjecture, quàm ille omnia omnibus fuerit.
78 CV. Lupia] Now called Lippe; a river of Westphalia, rising in the bishopric of Paderborn, and running into the Rhine near Wesel.
79 CX. At the place already mentioned] In prædicto loco. Apparently Carnuntum, c. 109, fin.
80 A vast number of soldiers] Magnus numerus vexillariorum. What the vexillarii were, is not quite certain. Ernesti, in his Excursus on the subject, subjoined to Tacitus’s History, thinks that they were tirones, and the same as the hastati.
81 CXI. With the tribunes of the people elect] Designatis tribunis plebis. According to Lipsius, the tribunes of the people were at this period chosen only from the senators. If so, some particular favour was shown to Velleius on this occasion, allowing him, though not yet a senator, to stand on an equality with the tribunes.
82 In my quæstorship, &c.] After taking the detachment of the army into Germany, says Krause, Velleius seems to have returned to Rome to enter upon his quæstorship; and then, during the time that he held that office, to have been again despatched to Germany by Augustus in the quality of legate, without waiting to take a province at the expiration of his quæstorship.
83 Did we behold] Vidimus. Krause’s text has fudimus, a conjecture of Heinsius. Burman holds to vidimus, as savouring less of boastfulness.
84 With what attention, &c.] The text is here mutilated and obscure.
85 CXII. At the standards of the legions] Apud signa — legionum. Krause takes signa for interior acies. Is apud signa the same as apud vexillarios, in Ernesti’s sense of vexillarii? See note on c. 110.
86 Agrippa] See [#CIV|c. 104]], init.
87 Also his grandfather] An inadvertent repetition; “natural grandfather” occurring above.
88 CXIII. Siscia] In Pannonia, now Sisseck, at the confluence of the Save and Colapis.
89 CXIV. On horseback] “Not in any carriage, or lectica.” Ruhnken.
90 Sat at meals] Cænavit sedens. Not reclining on a couch.
91 CXVI. A surname for his son] He left to his son the surname Gætulicus.
92 CXVII. Arrived] The verb is wanting in the original, as well as the words inclosed in brackets below, which are suggested by Vossius.
93 Nothing human but the voice, &c.] “He thought them mere brutes, and therefore undertook their transformation into men.” Krause.
94 CXVIII. When the gods, &c.] A repetition of the sentiment at the end of c. 57.
95 CXXIV. Cæsar’s candidates] Candidatis Cæsaris. That is, brought forward and recommended by Cæsar. See Suet. Aug., c. 56; Quintil., vi., 3.
96 CXXV. Not without danger to himself] Ancipitia sibi. These words are in some way corrupt; and the sentence is otherwise defective.
97 CXXVI. Dissensions in the theatre] These were not of so small importance as might be supposed, being sometimes attended with great bloodshed. See Suet. Tib., c. 57; Tacit. Ann., i., 77.
98 If slow, is certain] Sera, sed aliqua. Lipsius would read sed æqua, but Gruter and others think that aliqua may be right; i.e. some punishment is sure to follow.
99 CXXVII. In small matters, &c.] “If the words be Velleius’s, the observation is trifling, and utterly unworthy of him.” Krause.
100 CXXIX. Does he * * * hear] Pressius audit. The word pressius, which can hardly be sound, though Perizonius tries to defend it, I have not attempted to translate.
101 Did he crush * * *] Whose name should fill this blank is doubtful. Krause thinks that of Archelaus, king of Cappadocia.
102 CXXX. Daughter-in-law] Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus.
103 Grandson] Nero, the son of Germanicus. Velleius merely echoes the calumnies of Tiberius on both these characters.
104 CXXXI. [Our present prince!] The words hunc principem, which the text requires, are supplied from a conjecture of Lipsius. The conclusion of the prayer is imperfect.
Compendium of Roman History (1924 translation)
Translated by Frederick W. Shipley, Loeb Classical Library, 1924
CONTENTS
BOOK I.
BOOK II.
The Theatre of Pompey, Rome. Caesar was assassinated following a conspiracy by approximately 60 Roman senators, who called themselves the Liberators. Led by Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, they stabbed Julius Caesar to death in a location adjacent to the theatre on the Ides of March (March 15), 44 BC.
The site today
‘The Death of Julius Caesar’ by Vincenzo Camuccini, 1798
BOOK I.
[1] (1) Epeus, separated by a storm from Nestor, his chief, founded Metapontum. Teucer, disowned by his father Telamon because of his laxity in not avenging the wrong done to his brother, was driven to Cyprus and founded Salamis, named after the place of his birth. Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, established himself in Epirus; Phidippus in Ephyra in Thesprotia. (2) Agamemnon, king of kings, cast by a tempest upon the island of Crete, founded there three cities, two of which, Mycenae and Tegea, were named after towns in his own country, and the other was called Pergamum in commemoration of his victory.
Agamemnon was soon afterwards struck down and slain by the infamous crime of Aegisthus, his cousin, who still kept up against him the feud of his house, and by the wicked act of his wife. (3) Aegisthus maintained possession of the kingdom for seven years. Orestes slew Aegisthus and his own mother, seconded in all his plans by his sister Electra, a woman with the courage of a man. That his deed had the approval of the gods was made clear by the length of his life and the felicity of his reign, since he lived ninety years and reigned seventy. Furthermore, he also took revenge upon Pyrrhus the son of Achilles in fair fight, for he slew him at Delphi because he had forestalled him in marrying Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen who had been pledged to himself.
(4) About this time two brothers, Lydus and Tyrrhenus, were joint kings in Lydia. Hard pressed by the unproductiveness of their crops, they drew lots to see which should leave his country with part of the population. The lot fell upon Tyrrhenus. He sailed to Italy, and from him the place wherein he settled, its inhabitants, and the sea received their famous and their lasting names.
After the death of Orestes his sons Penthilus and Tisamenus reigned for three years.
[2] (1) About eighty years after the capture of Troy, and a hundred and twenty after Hercules had departed to the gods, the descendants of Pelops, who, during all this time had sway in the Peloponnesus after they had driven out the descendants of Hercules, were again in turn driven out by them. The leaders in the recovery of the sovereignty were Teme
nus, Cresphontes, and Aristodemus, the great-great‑grandsons of Hercules.
It was about this time that Athens ceased to be governed by kings. The last king of Athens was Codrus the son of Melanthus, a man whose story cannot be passed over. Athens was hard pressed in war by the Lacedaemonians, and the Pythian oracle had given the response that the side whose general should be killed by the enemy would be victorious. Codrus, therefore, laying aside his kingly robes and donning the garb of a shepherd, made his way into the camp of the enemy, deliberately provoked a quarrel, and was slain without being recognized. (2) By his death Codrus gained immortal fame, and the Athenians the victory. Who could withhold admiration from the man who sought death by the selfsame artifice by which cowards seek life? His son Medon was the first archon at Athens. It was after him that the archons who followed him were called Medontidae among the people of Attica. Medon and all the succeeding archons until Charops continued to hold that office for life. The Peloponnesians, when they withdrew from Attic territory, founded Megara, a city midway between Corinth and Athens.
(3) About this time, also, the fleet of Tyre, which controlled the sea, founded in the farthest district of Spain, on the remotest confines of our world, the city of Cadiz, on an island in the ocean separated from the mainland by a very narrow strait. The Tyrians a few years later also founded Utica in Africa.
The sons of Orestes, expelled by the Heraclidae, were driven about by many vicissitudes and by raging storms at sea, and, in the fifteenth year, finally settled on and about the island of Lesbos.
[3] (1) Greece was then shaken by mighty disturbances. The Achaeans, driven from Laconia, established themselves in those localities which they occupy to‑day. The Pelasgians migrated to Athens, and a warlike youth named Thessalus, of the race of the Thesprotians, with a great force of his fellow-countrymen took armed possession of that region, which, after his name, is now called Thessaly. Hitherto it had been called the state of the Myrmidones.
(2) On this account, one has a right to be surprised that writers who deal with the times of the Trojan war speak of this region as Thessaly. This is a common practice, but especially among the tragic poets, for whom less allowance should be made; for the poets do not speak in person, but entirely through mouths of characters who lived in the time referred to. But if anyone insists that the people were named Thessalians from Thessalus the son of Hercules, he will have to explain why this people never adopted the name until the time of this second Thessalus.
(3) Shortly before these events Aletes, the son of Hippotes, descended from Hercules in the sixth generation, founded upon the isthmus the city of Corinth, the key to the Peloponnesus, on the site of the former Ephyre. There is no need for surprise that Corinth is mentioned by Homer, for it is in his own person as poet that Homer calls this city and some of the Ionian colonies by the names which they bore in his day, although they were founded long after the capture of Troy.
[4] (1) The Athenians established colonies at Chalcis and Eretria in Euboea, and the Lacedaemonians the colony of Magnesia in Asia. Not long afterwards, the Chalcidians, who, as I have already said, were of Attic origin, founded Cumae in Italy under the leadership of Hippocles and Megasthenes. According to some accounts the voyage of this fleet was guided by the flight of a dove which flew before it; according to others by the sound at night of a bronze instrument like that which is beaten at the rites of Ceres. (2) At a considerably later period, a portion of the citizens of Cumae founded Naples. The remarkable and unbroken loyalty to the Romans of both these cities makes them well worthy of their repute and of their charming situation. The Neapolitans, however, continued the careful observance of their ancestral customs; the Cumaeans, on the other hand, were changed in character by the proximity of their Oscan neighbours. The extent of their walls at the present day serves to reveal the greatness of these cities in the past.
(3) At a slightly later date a great number of young Greeks, seeking new abodes because of an excess of population at home, poured into Asia. The Ionians, setting out from Athens under the leadership of Ion, occupied the best known portion of the sea-coast, which is now called Ionia, and established the cities of Ephesus, Miletus, Colophon, Priene, Lebedus, Myus, Erythra, Clazomenae, and Phocaea, and occupied many islands in the Aegaean and Icarian seas, namely, Samos, Chios, Andros, Tenos, Paros, Delos, and other islands of lesser note. (4) Not long afterwards the Aeolians also set out from Greece, and after long wanderings took possession of places no less illustrious and founded the famous cities of Smyrna, Cyme, Larissa, Myrina, Mytilene, and other cities on the island of Lesbos.
[5] (1) Then the brilliant genius of Homer burst upon the world, the greatest beyond compare, who by virtue of the magnitude of his work and the brilliance of his poetry alone deserves the name of poet. (2) His highest claim to greatness is that, before his day, no one was found for him to imitate, nor after his day has one been found to imitate him. Nor shall we find any other poet who achieved perfection in the field in which he was also the pioneer, with the exception of Homer and Archilochus. (3) Homer lived at a period more remote than some people think from the Trojan war of which he wrote; for he flourished only about nine hundred and fifty years ago, and it is less than a thousand since his birth. It is therefore not surprising that he often uses the expression οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσιν, for by it is denoted the difference, not merely in men, but in ages as well. If any man holds to the view that Homer was born blind, he is himself lacking in all his senses.
[6] (1) In the following age — about eight hundred and seventy years ago — the sovereignty of Asia passed to the medes from the Assyrians, who had held it for ten hundred and seventy years. (2) Indeed, it was their king Sardanapalus, a man enervated by luxurious living, whose excess of fortune was his undoing. Thirty-third, in direct succession of father and son, from Ninus and Semiramis, who had founded Babylon, he was deprived alike of his empire and of his life by Arbaces the Mede.
(3) At this time lived Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian, one of the most illustrious personages of Greece, a man of royal descent, the author of legislation most severe and most just, and of a discipline excellently adapted for the making of men. As long as Sparta followed it, she flourished in the highest degree.
(4) In this period, sixty-five years before the founding of Rome, Carthage was established by the Tyrian Elissa, by some authors called Dido. (5) About this time also Caranus, a man of royal race, eleventh in descent from Hercules, set out from Argos and seized the kingship of Macedonia. From him Alexander the Great was descended in the seventeenth generation, and could boast that, on his mother’s side, he was descended from Achilles, and, on his father’s side, from Hercules. (6) Aemilius Sura says in his book on the chronology of Rome: “The Assyrians were the first of all races to hold world power, then the Medes, and after them the Persians, and then the Macedonians. Then through the defeat of Kings Philip and Antiochus, of Macedonian origin, following closely upon the overthrow of Carthage, the world power passed to the Roman people. Between this time and the beginning of the reign of Ninus king of the Assyrians, who was the first to hold world power, lies an interval of nineteen hundred and ninety-five years.”
[7] (1) To this period belonged Hesiod, separated from the age of Homer by about one hundred and twenty years. A man of an exquisite taste, famous for the soft charm of his poems, and an ardent lover of peace and quiet, he ranks next to Homer, not only in point of time, but also in the reverence in which his work is held. Avoiding the mistake which Homer made, he has indeed told us of his country and parents, but of his country, at whose hands he had suffered punishment, he speaks in the most disparaging terms.
(2) While dwelling on the history of foreign countries, I now come to an event pertaining to our own, one in which there has been much error, and in which the views of the authorities show great discrepancy. For some maintain that about this time, eight hundred and thirty years ago, Capua and Nola were founded by the Etruscans. With these I myself am inclined to agr
ee, but the opinion of Marcus Cato is vastly different. (3) He admits that Capua, and afterwards Nola, were founded by the Etruscans, but maintains that Capua had been in existence for only about two hundred and sixty years before its capture by the Romans. (4) If this is so, as it is but two hundred and forty years since Capua was taken, it is but five hundred years since it was founded. For my own part, with all due regard for Cato’s accuracy, I can scarcely believe that the city could have had such growth, such prosperity, or could have fallen and risen again, in so short a space of time.
[8] (1) Soon afterwards the Olympic games, the most celebrated of all contests in sports, and one which was most effective in developing the qualities both of body and mind, had their beginning under the auspices of Iphitus, king of Elis. He instituted the games and the concourse eight hundred and twenty-three years before your consulship, Marcus Vinicius. (2) There is a tradition that Atreus began this sacred observance in the same place about twelve hundred and fifty years ago, when he held the funeral games in honour of his father Pelops and that at this celebration Hercules was the victor in every class of contest.
(3) It was about this time that the archons at Athens ceased to hold their office for life. Alcmaeon was the last of the life archons. The archons now began to be elected for terms of ten years. This custom continued for seventy years, then the government was entrusted to magistrates elected annually. Charops was the first and Eryxias the last of those who held the office for ten years, and Creon was the first of the annual archons.
Complete Works of Velleius Paterculus Page 16