RES Romanis, ex voluntate manfue. tudinis tuæ, ab urbe condita ad noftram me HAVE collected in a. brief narrative, and in order of time,the Roman affairs, from the building moriam, quæ in negotiis of the city, that appeared vel bellicis, vel civilibus the moft confiderable, in eminebant, per ordinem the tranfactions either of temporum brevi nar- war or peace, according ratione collegi, ftrictim to the pleasure of your additis etiam iis, que *clemency, adding with in 1. This Valens was taken in by the Emperor Valentinian the firft, as his partner in the empire, in the year of Chrit 364 He managed the war for fome time againft the Goths, which was the occafion of his title Gothicus. He received a dangerous wound by an arrow in a battle against the fame Goths, and upon his being carried out of the field into a houfe not far off, was purfued by them and burnt alive, together with the houfe, in the year of Chrift 377. 2. The title of Auguftus is equivalent to that of Emperor; it was at firft given by the Senate to Octavius, the nephew and adopted fon of Julius Cæfar, and kept by the following Emperors. *This title of Manfuetudo, as well as Tranquilitas, and several others was applied to the Emperors in the fame manner as his Majefty is now to Kings. They were introduced not long before thefe times, by the fordid flattery of the people, confirmed by the want of fenfe and modefty in the Emperors, who tamely fuffered themselves to be addrefled in fuch a kind of language as was only proper to the Deity. The old Greeks and Romans were wholly ftrangers to any thing of that kind. in principum vitis egregia exftiterunt; ut tran. quilitatis tuæ poffit mens divina lætari, prius fe illuftrium virorum falt in adminiftrando imperio fequutam, quàm cog. nofceret lectione. al, briefly those things, which were remarkable in the lives of the Emperors; * that the divine mind of your tranquillity may rejoice to find it has followed the conduct of illuftrious men in governing the empire, before it was acquainted therewith by reading. Our author makes the Emperor here but a coarse kind of compliment,in fuppofing the divine mind of his tranquillity,as he words himself, so very ignorant of the Roman hiftory, at an age when he is capable of commanding armies, and had done it for fome time against the Goths; either the Emperor, or thofe charged with the care of his education, must have been highly to blame, if our author fays true. EUTROPII EUTROPII BREVIARIUM HISTORIÆ ROMANÆ. R LIBER I. OMANUM Im-Than which the hif perium, quo ne. que ab exordio ullum tory of mankind cannot fere minus, neque in furnish us with any almoft, crementis toto orbe lefs in its original, nor amplius, humana po- greater in its increafe, teft memoria recorda. throughout the whole world, ri, a Romulo exordi- has its beginning from Ro-. um habet,qui Veftalis mulus, who being the fon virginis, & (quantum of a veftalt Nun, and (as putatus eft) Martis, was fuppofed) of Mars, cum Remo fratre, u- was born at the fame birth no partu editus eft. with his brother Remus. Is * I choose to render the word memoria history, a lense it sometimes has: If our author must be fupposed to have used it in its ordinary acceptation, I fee not what tolerable fenfe can be made of what he fays. I confefs the word recordor, in the only fenfe it hath in good authors, does not agree with my tranflation of memoria; but I am apt to believe it is here used improperly, and may be an inftance of that deviation from the purity of the Latin tongue, which prevailed in our author's time. Virginis filius may not feem very proper; but it is certain the word virgo is fometimes ufed, even in Terence itself, tor a young woman, after the bearing of a child. B Is cum inter paftores He whilft he #robbed a latrocinaretur, octode cim annos natus, ur. bem exiguam in Palati. no monte conftituit,xi. Kal. Maii, Olympiadis fextæ anno tertio, poft Troja excidium, ut mongst the fhepherds, be ing but 18 years old, built a little city upon the Palatine mount, upon the eleventh of the +calends of May, in the third year of the fixth Olympiad, in qui That most ingenious lady, daughter of Tanaquil le Fevre, who wrote notes upon Eutropius, for the ufe of the Dauphin, and afterwards married Monf. Dacier, cabinetmaker to the late French King, explains the word Latrocinari, by militare, vitam in armis degere, for which the quotes Plautus; in whofe time, it is true, the word was fometimes fo ufed; but that fenfe of it was out of date long before the days of Eutropius, who, had he ufed it fo, would have been underflood by nobody, if he him-felf was fo well read in antiquity as to know the ancients had used it fo, which is not very likely. I choofe, therefore to render it in the only fenfe it had in our author's time. Romulus might, as Plutarch fays,defend his neighbor fhepherds against robbers, and rob too by way of reprifal. There was nothing more common in those early ages of the world, when kingdoms and commonwealths were of very finall extent, han for parties in ftates that bordered upon one another, to faily out of the co fines of their own little territory, to rob their borderers. Cæfar informs us that in his time the practice was reckoned commendable and glorious among the Germans, and Thucydides gives no better account of: the Greeks and their neighbors, fome generations before his own time. + The first day of every month was called the calends, and the days from the 13th in fome, and the 15th in others, were reckon.. ed by their diftance from the first day, or the calends of the following; thus the 11th of the calends of May is the 10th day before the firit of May, or the 21st of April. The Olympiads were a famous Æra or Epocha amongst the Greeks, being a term of four years, so denominated from Ölymphia, a town in the west of Peloponnefus, nigh the river ALPHAUs, where, every four years, games were celebrated by a vast concourfe of people from Greece and other parts. Thefe games were at firft inftituted, they tell you, by the famous Hercules, but after his time, difcontinued, and revived again at last, in the year before Chrift 775. The first four years from the revival of ihem, was termed the firft Olympiad. the next four years, the fecond Olympiad, and fo on. And when the Greeks took no tice of the time of any tranfaction, they faid, it fell out in the 1ft, 2d, 3d or 4th year of fuch an Olympiad. qui plurimum mini- the *394th year of the demumque tradunt, tre- ftruction of Troy.t centelimo, nonagefimo quarto. 2. Condita civitate, 2.Having built the city, quam ex nomine fuo which he called by his own Romam vocavit, hæc name Rome, he performed fere egit. Multitudi- thefe things. He took great nem finitimorum in numbers of his neighbors civitatem recepit; cen. into his city. He chofe a tum ex fenioribus ele- hundred of the elders of git, quorum confilio the people; by whofe adomnia ageret; quos vice he managed all his af fenatores nominavit fairs, which he called fenpropter fene&tum. ators becaufe of their age. Tunc, cum uxores Then, as he and his people ipfe & populus non had no wives, he invited haberent, invitavit ad the nations, neighbors to fpectaculum ludorum his city, to the fight of vicinas urbi nationes, games, and feized all their atque *The deftruction of Troy happened, according to the beft chronologers, 1184 years before Chrift, and Rome was built about 752; the difference which is in the time from the deftruction of Troy till the building of Rome, is 432. As the words ut qui plurimum minimumque tradunt have visibly no meaning, I have not tranflated them. Madam Dacier, indeed, makes no difficulty of them, though the fays a great many before her had ; to make up the fenfe, the informs us we are to understand the words eos præteream after ut; which to be fure makes good fenfe; but if that was what the auther intended to fay, unless he expected people fhould understand his meaning by his gaping, he fhould not have left those words out for nothing in writing or fpeaking ought to be omitted, but what is obvious to be understood, without being expreffed, which I think thofe words are not. The fame fentence occurs again in the last chapter of the tenth book, otherwife I fhould be inclinable to believe the words eos præteream had by the careleffness of fome copier of books been omitted; for without that, or fomething equiva-1 lent, this paffage is imperfect, and without fenfe. If the author must be fuppofed to have left it to be understood, it was an inexcufable blunder in him. |