29. Cato, like every other Roman, invested a part of his means in the breeding of cattle, and in commercial and other undertakings. But it was not his habit directly to violate the laws; he neither speculated in state-leases - which as a senator he was not allowed to do - nor practised usury. It is an injustice to charge him with a practice in the latter respect at variance with his theory; the fenus nauticum, in which he certainly engaged, was not a branch of usury prohibited by the law; it really formed an essential part of the business of chartering and freighting vessels.

1. That Asiagenus was the original title of the hero of Magnesia and of his descendants, is established by coins and inscriptions; the fact that the Capitoline Fasti call him Asiaticus is one of several traces indicating that these have undergone a non-contemporary revision. The former surname can only he a corruption of Asiagenus - the form which later authors substituted for it - which signifies not the conqueror of Asia, but an Asiatic by birth.

2. II. VIII. Religion.

3. [In the first edition of this translation I gave these lines in English on the basis of Dr. Mommsen's German version, and added in a note that I had not been able to find the original. Several scholars whom I consulted were not more successful; and Dr. Mommsen was at the time absent from Berlin. Shortly after the first edition appeared, I received a note from Sir George Cornewall Lewis informing me that I should find them taken from Florus (or Floridus) in Wernsdorf, Poetae Lat. Min. vol. iii. p. 487. They were accordingly given in the revised edition of 1868 from the Latin text Baehrens (Poet. Lat. Min. vol. iv. p. 347) follows Lucian Muller in reading offucia. - TR.]

4. A sort of parabasis in the Curculio of Plautus describes what went on in the market-place of the capital, with little humour perhaps, but with life-like distinctness.

The verses in brackets are a subsequent addition, inserted after the building of the first Roman bazaar (570). The business of the baker (pistor, literally miller) embraced at this time the sale of delicacies and the providing accommodation for revellers (Festus, Ep. v. alicariae, p. 7, Mull.; Plautus, Capt. 160; Poen. i. a, 54; Trin. 407). The same was the case with the butchers. Leucadia Oppia may have kept a house of bad fame.

5. II. IX. The Roman National Festival.

6. III. XIII. Religious Economy.

1. A distinct set of Greek expressions, such as stratioticus, machaera, nauclerus, trapezita, danista, drapeta, oenopolium, bolus, malacus, morus, graphicus, logus, apologus, techna, schema, forms quite a special feature in the language of Plautus. Translations are seldom attached, and that only in the case of words not embraced in the circle of ideas to which those which we have cited belong; for instance, in the Truculentus - in a verse, however, that is perhaps a later addition (i. 1, 60) - we find the explanation: phronesis est sapientia. Fragments of Greek also are common, as in the Casina, (iii. 6, 9): Pragmata moi parecheis - Dabo mega kakon, ut opinor. Greek puns likewise occur, as in the Bacchides (240): opus est chryso Chrysalo. Ennius in the same way takes for granted that the etymological meaning of Alexandros and Andromache is known to the spectators (Varro, de L. L. vii. 82). Most characteristic of all are the half-Greek formations, such as ferritribax, plagipatida, pugilice, or in the Miles Gloriosus (213): Fuge! euscheme hercle astitit sic dulice et comoedice!

2. III. VIII. Greece Free.

3. One of these epigrams composed in the name of Flamininus runs thus:

4. Such, e. g, was Chilo, the slave of Cato the Elder, who earned money en bis master's behalf as a teacher of children (Plutarch, Cato Mai. 20).

5. II. IX. Ballad-Singers.

6. The later rule, by which the freedman necessarily bore the -praenomen- of his patron, was not yet applied in republican Rome.

7. II. VII. Capture of Tarentum.

8. III. VI. Battle of Sena.

9. One of the tragedies of Livius presented the line

The verses of Homer (Odyssey, xii. 16):

are thus interpreted:

The most remarkable feature is not so much the barbarism as the thoughtlessness of the translator, who, instead of sending Circe to Ulysses, sends Ulysses to Circe. Another still more ridiculous mistake is the translation of aidoioisin edoka (Odyss. xv. 373) by lusi (Festus, Ep. v. affatim, p. ii, Muller). Such traits are not in a historical point of view matters of difference; we recognize in them the stage of intellectual culture which irked these earliest Roman verse-making schoolmasters, and we at the same time perceive that, although Andronicus was born in Tarentum, Greek cannot have been properly his mother-tongue.