Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.4, 1865).djvu/577

of Euripides (317). Tiresias, defending the bacchic rites to Pentheus, who forbids them, says that

There is a story told of a banquet in Sicily where Dionysius bade all the company get up, each one in his turn, put on a purple gown, and perform a dance: Plato declined, quoting the words of Pentheus (Bacchæ, 835), "I cannot go into a woman's robes;" Aristippus complied, and quoted Tiresias, in the same play, as above.

Page 526.—Flavius should, in accordance with Roman usage, be Fulvius.

Page 528.—This punishment, by which Caius Villius was cruelly murdered, is that usually said to have been reserved for parricides, except that the tun, as Plutarch calls it, should be a sack. The parricide was sewn up in a leather sack (insutus in culeum) with a dog, an ape, a viper, and a cock, and thrown into the sea. Thus Juvenal, VIII., 214,

Page 529.—The story of Blossius is told by Cicero in the dialogue on Friendship (de Amicitia, 11). The verse out of Homer in the following page is from the first book of the Odyssey (47). Minerva says so to Jupiter, who has spoken of Orestes killing Ægisthus; he has died the death he deserved; "so perish any one else that does as he has been doing."

Life of Caius Gracchus, page 532.—Cicero relates the story of Caius's dream in the dialogue on Divination I., 26: "quam vellet, cunctaretur; tamen eodem sibi leto quo ipse interisset, esse pereundum." Caius had the dream when he was a candidate for the quæstorship, and had related it, some time before he was elected tribune, to many persons, and amongst others to Cælius the historian, from whom Cicero took the statement.

Page 539.—This Caius Fannius is not Lælius's son-in-law, who is quoted in the Life of Tiberius, but a different person, Caius Fannius Strabo.

Page 549.—The grove consecrated to the Furies is probably the grove of Furina, lucus Furinæ, a goddess whom Cicero (de Natura Deorum, III., 8) connects with the Greek Eumenides or Erinnyes, so that it would not be absolutely a mistake in Plutarch; and Aurelius Victor expressly says, by the help of his friend Pomponius, who turned to withstand the pursuers at the gate Trigemina, and of Publius Lætorius, who did so on the Sublician bridge, he reached the lucus Furina. This obscure divinity, whether a Fury or a patron goddess of theft, nevertheless had had a high priest of her own, a flamen Furinalis, and a yearly festival, the Furinalia, facts in the time of Cicero and Varro scarcely known to a few antiquarians. The passages showing the route taken by Caius in his flight are of some interest in the topography of Rome, as they appear to prove that the Old Bridge, the Sublician, was outside the walls.