Church Fathers: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 06: 26.02.13 Against Jovinianus Bk 1 Pt 5

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Church Fathers: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 06: 26.02.13 Against Jovinianus Bk 1 Pt 5



TOPIC: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 06 (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 26.02.13 Against Jovinianus Bk 1 Pt 5

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40. The Apostle has described Jovinianus speaking with swelling cheeks and nicely balancing his inflated utterances, promising heavenly liberty, when he himself is the slave of vice and self-indulgence, a dog returning to his vomit. For although he boasts of being a monk, he has exchanged his dirty tunic, bare feet, common bread, and drink of water, for a snowy dress, sleek skin, honey-wine and dainty dishes, for the sauces ofhyperlink Apicius andhyperlink Paxamus, for baths and rubbings, and for the cook-shops. Is it not clear that he prefers his belly to Christ, and thinks his ruddy complexion worth the kingdom of heaven? And yet that handsome monk so fat and sleek, and of bright appearance, who always walks with the air of a bridegroom, must either marry a wife if he is to show that virginity and marriage are equal: or if he does not marry one, it is useless for him to bandy words with us when his acts are on our side. And John agrees with this almost to the letter:hyperlink "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of this life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world." And, "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. A new commandment have I written unto you, which thing is true both in Christ and in you; because the darkness is passing away, and the true light already shineth." And again,hyperlink "Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. But we know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him: for we shall see him even as he is. And every one that hath this hope purifieth himself, even as he is pure.hyperlink Herein is our love made perfect, if we have boldness in the day of judgement: that as he is, even so may we be in this world." The Epistle of Jude also expresses nearly the same:hyperlink "Hating even the garment spotted by the flesh." Let us read the Apocalypse of John, and we shall there find the Lamb upon Mount Sion,hyperlink and with Him "a hundred and forty-four thousand of them that were sealed, having His name and the name of His Father written in their foreheads, who sing a new song, and no one can sing that song save they who have been redeemed out of the earth. These are they who have not defiled themselves with women, for they continued virgins. These follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth: for they were redeemed from among men, first-fruits to God and to the Lamb, and in their mouth was found no guile, and they are without spot."hyperlink Out of each tribe, the tribe of Dan excepted, the place of which is taken by the tribe of Levi, twelve thousand virgins who have been sealed are spoken of as future believers, who have not defiled themselves with women. And that we may not suppose the reference to be to those who know not harlots, he immediately added: "For they continued virgins." Whereby he shows that all who have not preserved their virginity, in comparison of pure and angelic chastity and of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, are defiled.hyperlink "These are they who sing a new song which no man can sing except him that is a virgin. These are first-fruits unto God and unto the Lamb, and are without blemish." If virgins are first-fruits, it follows that widows and the continent in marriage, come after the first-fruits, that is, are in the second and third rank: nor can a lost people be saved unless it offer such sacrifices of chastity to God, and with pure victims reconcile the spotless Lamb. It would be endless work to explain the Gospel mystery of the ten virgins, five of whom were wise and five foolish. All I say now is, that as mere virginity without other works does not save, so all works without virginity, purity, continence, chastity, are imperfect. And we shall not be hindered in the least from taking this view by the objection of our opponent that our Lord was at Cana of Galilee, and joined in the marriage festivities when He turned water into wine. I shall very briefly reply, that He Who was circumcised on the eighth day, and for Whom a pair of turtle-doves and two young pigeons were offered on the day of purification, like others before He suffered, shewed His approval of Jewish custom, that He might not seem to give His enemies just cause for putting Him to death on the pretext that He destroyed the law and condemned nature. And even this was done for our sakes. For by going once to a marriage, He taught that men should marry only once. Moreover, at that time it was possible to injure virginity if marriage were not placed next to it, and the purity of widowhood in the third rank. But now when heretics are condemning wedlock, and despise the ordinance of God, we gladly hear anything hehyperlink may say in praise of marriage. For the Church does not condemn marriage, but makes it subordinate; nor does she reject it, but regulates it; for she knows, as was said before, thathyperlink in a great house there are notonly vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware; and that some are to honour, some to dishonour; and that whoever cleanses himself will be a vessel of honour, necessary, prepared for every good work.

41. I have given enough and more than enough illustrations from the divine writings of Christian chastity and angelic virginity. But as I understand that our opponent in his commentaries summons us to the tribunal of worldly wisdom, and we are told that views of this kind are never accepted in the world, and that our religion has invented a dogma against nature, I will quickly run through Greek and Roman and Foreign History, and will show that virginity ever took the lead of chastity. Fable relates that Atalanta, the virgin of Calydonian fame, lived for the chase and dwelt always in the woods; in other words that she did not set her heart on marriage with its troubles of pregnancy and of sickness, but upon the nobler life of freedom and chastity.hyperlink Harpalyce too, a Thracian virgin, is described by the famous poet; and so ishyperlink Camilia, queen of the Volsci, on whom, when she came to his assistance, Turnus had no higher praise which he could bestow than to call her a virgin. "O Virgin, Glory of Italy!" And that famous daughter ofhyperlink Leos, the lady of the brazen house, ever a virgin, is related to have freed her country from pestilence by her voluntary death: and the blood of the virginhyperlink Iphigenia is said to have calmed the stormy winds. What need to tell of the Sibyls of Erythrae and Cumae, and the eight others? for Varro asserts there were ten whose ornament was virginity, and divination the reward of their virginity. But if in the Aeolian dialect "Sibyl" is represented by Qeobou/lh, we must understand that a knowledge of the Counsel of God is rightly attributed to virginity alone. We read, too, that Cassandra and Chryseis, prophetesses of Apollo and Juno, were virgins. And there were innumerable priestesses of the Taurian Diana, and of Vesta. One of these, Munitia, being suspected of unchastily washyperlink buried alive, which would be in my opinion an unjust punishment, unless the violation of virginity were considered a serious crime. At all events how highly the Romans always esteemed virgins is clear from the fact that consuls and generals even in their triumphal chariots and bringing home the spoils of conquered nations, were wont to make way for them to pass. And so did men of all ranks. Whenhyperlink Claudia, a Vestal Virgin, was suspected of unchastily, and a vessel containing the image of Cybele was aground in the Tiber, it is related that she, to prove her chastity, with her girdle drew the ship which a thousand men could not move. Yet, ashyperlink the uncle of Lucan the poet says, it would have been better if this circumstance had decorated a chastity tried and proved, and had not pleaded in defence of a chastity equivocal. No wonder that we read such things of human beings, when heathen error also invented the virgin goddesses Minerva and Diana, and placed the Virgin among the twelve signs of the Zodiac, by means of which, as they suppose, the world revolves. It is a proof of the little esteem in which they held marriage that they did not even among the scorpions, centaurs, crabs, fishes, and capricorn, thrust in a husband and wife. When the thirty tyrants of Athens had slain Phidon at the banquet, they commanded his virgin daughters to come to them, naked like harlots, and there upon the ground, red with their father's blood, to act the wanton. For a little while they hid their grief, and then when they saw the revellers were intoxicated, going out on the plea of easing nature, they embraced one another and threw themselves into a well, that by death they might save their virginity. The virgin daughter of Demotion, chief of the Areopagites, having heard of the death of her betrothed,hyperlink Leosthenes, who had originated the Lamian war, slew herself, for she declared that although in body she was a virgin, yet if she were compelled to: accept another, she should regard him as her second husband, when she had given her heartto Leosthenes. So close a friendship long existed between Sparta and Messene that for the furtherance of certain religious rites they even exchanged virgins. Well, on one occasion when the men of Messene attempted to outrage fifty Lacedaemonian virgins, out of so many not one consented, but they all most gladly died in defence of their chastity. Whence there arose a long and grievous war, and in the long runhyperlink Mamertina was destroyed. Aristoclides, tyrant of Orchomenos, fell in love with a virgin of Stymphalus, and when after the death of her father she took refuge in the temple of Diana, and embraced the image of the goddess and could not be dragged thence by force, she was slain on the spot. Her death caused such intense grief throughout Arcadia that the people took up arms and avenged the virgin's death.hyperlink Aristomenes of Messene, a just man, at a time when the Lacedaemonians, whom he had conquered, were celebrating by night the festival called thehyperlink Hyacinthia, carried off from the sportive bands fifteen virgins, and fleeing all night at full speed got away from the Spartan territory. His companions wished to outrage them, but he admonished them to the best of his power not to do so, and when certain refused to obey, he slew them, and restrained the rest by fear. The maidens were afterwards ransomed by their kinsmen, and on seeing Aristomenes condemned for murder would not return to their country until clasping the knees of the judges they beheld the protector of their chastity acquitted. How shall we sufficiently praise the daughters of Scedasus at Leuctra in Boeotia? It is related that in the absence of their father they hospitably entertained two youths who were passing by, and who having drunk to excess violated the virgins in the course of the night. Being unwilling to survive the loss of their virginity, the maidens inflicted deadly wounds on one another. Nor would it be right to omit mention of the Locrian virgins. They were sent to Ilium according to custom which had lasted for nearly a thousand years, and yet not one gave occasion to any idle tale or filthy rumour of virginity defiled. Could any one pass over in silence the seven virgins of Miletus who, when the Gauls spread desolation far and wide, that they might suffer no indignity at the hands of the enemy, escaped disgrace by death, and left to all virgins the lesson of their example-that noble minds care more for chastity than life? Nicanor having conquered and overthrown Thebes was himself overcome by a passion for one captive virgin, whose voluntary self-surrender he longed for. A captive maid, he thought, must be only too glad. But he found that virginity is dearer to the pure in heart than a kingdom, when with tears and grief he held her in his arms slain by her own hand. Greek writers tell also of another Theban virgin who had been deflowered by a Macedonian foe, and who, hiding her grief for a while, slew the violator of her virginity as he slept, and then killed herself with the sword, so that she wouldneither live when her chastity was lost, nor diebefore she had avenged herself.

42. To come to the Gymnosophists of India, the opinion is authoritatively handed down that Budda, the founder of their religion, had his birth through the side of a virgin. And we need not wonder at this in the case of Barbarians when cultured Greece supposed that Minerva at her birth sprang from the head of Jove, and Father Bacchus from his thigh.hyperlink Speusippus also, Plato's nephew, andhyperlink Clearchus in his eulogy of Plato, andhyperlink Anaxelides in the second book of his philosophy, relates that Perictione, the mother of Plato, was violated by an apparition of Apollo, and they agree in thinking that the prince of wisdom was born of a virgin.hyperlink Timus writes that thehyperlink virgin daughter ofhyperlink Pythagoras was at the head of a band of virgins, and instructed them in chastity.hyperlink Diodorus, the disciple of Socrates, is said to have had five daughters skilled in dialectics and distinguished for chastity, of whom a full account is given by Philo the master ofhyperlink Carneades. And mighty Rome cannot taunt us as though we had invented the story of the birth of our Lord and Saviour from a virgin; for the Romans believe that the founders of their city and race were the offspring of the virginhyperlink Ilia and of Mars.

43. Let these allusions to the virgins of the world, brief and hastily gathered from many histories, now suffice. I will proceed to married women who were reluctant to survive the decease or violent death of their husbands for fear they might be forced into a second marriage, and who entertained a marvellous affection for the only husbands they had. This may teach us that second marriage was repudiated among the heathen. Dido, the sister of Pygmalion, having collected a vast amount of gold and silver, sailed to Africa, and there built Carthage. And when her hand was sought in marriage by Iarbas, king of Libya, she deferred the marriage for a while until her country was settled. Not long after, having raised ahyperlink funeral pyre to the memory of her former husband Sichus, she preferred to "burn rather than to marry." Carthage was built by a woman of chastity, and its end was a tribute to the excellence of the virtue. For thehyperlink wife of Hasdrubal, when the city was captured and set on fire, and she saw that she could not herself escape capture by the Romans, took her little children in either hand and leaped into the burning ruins of her house.

44. What need to tell of the wife ofhyperlink Niceratus, who, not enduring to wrong her husband, inflicted death upon herself rather than subject herself to the lust of the thirty tyrants whom Lysander had set over conquered Athens?hyperlink Artemisia, also, wife of Mausolus, is related to have been distinguished for chastity. Though she was queen of Caria, and is extolled by great poets and historians, no higher praise is bestowed upon her than that when her husband was dead she loved him as much as when he was alive, and built a tomb so great that even to the present day all costly sepulchres are called after his name, mausoleums.hyperlink Teuta, queen of the Illyrians, owed her long sway over brave warriors, and her frequent victories over Rome, to her marvellous chastity. The Indians and almost all the Barbarians have a plurality of wives. It is a law with them that the favourite wife must be burned with her dead husband. The wives therefore vie with one another for the husband's love, and the highest ambition of the rivals, and the proof of chastity, is to be considered worthy of death. So then she that is victorious, having put on her former dress and ornaments, lies down beside the corpse, embracing and kissing it, and to the glory of chastity despises the flames which are burning beneath her. I suppose that she who dies thus, wants no second marriage. The famous Alcibiades, the friend of Socrates, when Athens was conquered, fled to Pharnabazus, who took a bribe from Lysander the Lacedaemonian leader and ordered him to be slain. He was strangled, and when his head had been cut off it was sent to Lysander as proof of the murder, but the rest of his body lay unburied. His concubine, therefore, all alone, in defiance of the command of the cruel enemy, in the midst of strangers, and in the face of peril, gave him due burial, for she was ready to die for the dead man whom she had loved when living. Let matrons, Christian matrons at all events, imitate the fidelity of concubines, and exhibit in their freedom what she in her captivity preserved.

45. Strato, ruler of Sidon, thought of dying by his own hand, that he might not be the sport of the Persians, who were close by and whose alliance he had discarded for the friendship of the king of Egypt. But he drew back in terror, and eying the sword which he had seized, awaited in alarm the approach of the enemy. His wife, knowing that he must be immediately taken, wrested the weapon from his hand, and pierced his side. When the body was properly laid out she lay down upon it in the agony of death, that she might not violate her virgin troth in the embraces of another.hyperlink Xenophon, in describing the early years of the eider Cyrus, relates that when her husband Abradatas was slain, Panthea who had loved him intensely, placed herself beside the mangled body, then stabbed herself, and let her blood run into her husband's wounds. Thehyperlink queen whom the king her husband had shewn naked and without her knowledge to his friend, thought she had good cause for slaying the king. She judged that she was not beloved if it was possible for her to be exhibited to another. Rhodogune, daughter of Darius, after the death of her husband, put to death the nurse who was trying to persuade her to marry again.hyperlink Alcestis is related in story to have voluntarily died for Admetus, and Penelope's chastity is the theme of Homer's song. Laodamia's praises are also sung by the poets, because, whenhyperlink Protesilaus was slain at Troy, she refused to survive him.

46. I may pass on to Roman women; and the first that I shall mention ishyperlink Lucretia, who would not survive her violated chastity, but blotted out the stain upon her person with her own blood. Duilius, the first Roman who won ahyperlink naval triumph, took to wife a virgin, Bilia, of such extraordinary chastity that she was an example even to an age which held unchastity to be not merely vicious but monstrous. When he was grown old and feeble he was once in the course of a quarrel taunted with having bad breath. In dudgeon he betook himself home, and on complaining to his wife that she had never told him of it so that he might remedy the fault, he received the reply that she would have done so, but she thought that all men had foul breath as he had. In either case this chaste and noble woman deserves praise, whether she was not aware there was anything wrong with her husband, or if she patiently endured, and her husband discovered his unfortunate condition not by the disgust of a wife, but by the abuseof an enemy. At all events the woman who marries a second time cannot say this. Marcia, Cato's younger daughter, on being asked after the loss of her husband why she did not marry again, replied that she could not find a man who wanted her more than her money. Her words teach us that men in choosing their wives look for riches rather than for chastity, and that many in marrying use not their eyes but their fingers. That must be an excellent thing which is won by avarice! When the same lady was mourning the loss of her husband, and the matrons asked what day would terminate her grief, she replied, "The same that terminates my life." I imagine that a woman who thus followed her husband in heart and mind had no thought of marrying again. Porcia, whomhyperlink Brutus took to wife, was a virgin; Cato's wife,hyperlink Marcia, was not a virgin; but Marcia went to and fro between Hortensius and Cato, and was quite content to live without Cato; whilehyperlink Porcia could not live without Brutus; for women attach themselves closely to particular men, and to keep to one is a strong link in the chain of affection. When a relative urged Annia to marry again (she was of full age and a goodly person), she answered, "I shall certainly not do so. For, if I find a good man, I have no wish to be in fear of losing him: if a bad one, why must I put up with a bad husband after having had a good one?"hyperlink Porcia the younger, on hearing a certain lady of good character, who had a second husband, praised in her house, replied, "A chaste and happy matron never marries more than once." Marcella the elder, on being asked by her mother if she was glad she was married, answered, "So much so that I want nothing more. "hyperlink Valeria, sister of the Messalas, when she lost her husband Servius, would marry no one else. On being asked why not, she said that to her, her husband Servius was ever alive.

47. I feel that in giving this list of women I have said far more than is customary in illustrating a point, and that I might be justly censured by my learned reader. But what am I to do when the women of our time press me with apostolic authority, and before the first husband is buried, repeat from morning to night the precepts which allow a second marriage? Seeing they despise the fidelity which Christian purity dictates, let them at least learn chastity from the heathen. A book On Marriage, worth its weight in gold, passes under the name ofhyperlink Theophrastus. In it the author asks whether a wise man marries. And after laying down the conditions-that the wife must be fair, of good character, and honest parentage, the husband in good health and of ample means, and after saying that under these circumstances a wise man sometimes enters the state of matrimony, he immediately proceeds thus: "But all these conditions are seldom satisfied in marriage. A wise man therefore must not take a wife. For in the first place his study of philosophy will be hindered, and it is impossible for anyone to attend to his books and his wife. Matrons want many things, costly dresses, gold, jewels, great outlay, maid-servants, all kinds of furniture, litters and gilded coaches. Then come curtain-lectures the livelong night: she complains that one lady goes out better dressed than she: that another is looked up to by all: `I am a poor despised nobody at the ladies' assemblies.' `Why did you ogle that creature next door?' `Why were you talking to the maid?' `What did you bring from the market?' `I am not allowed to have a single friend, or companion.' She suspects that her husband's love goes the same way as her hate. There may be in some neighbouring city the wisest of teachers; but if we have a wife we can neither leave her behind, nor take the burden with us. To support a poor wife, is hard: to put up with a rich one, is torture. Notice, too, that in the case of a wife you cannot pick and choose: you must take her as you find her. If she has a bad temper, or is a fool, if she has a blemish, or is proud, or has bad breath, whatever her fault may be-all this we learn after marriage. Horses, asses, cattle, even slaves of the smallest worth, clothes, kettles, wooden seats, cups, and earthenware pitchers, are first tried and then bought: a wife is the only thing that is not shown before she is married, for fear she may not give satisfaction. Our gaze must always be directed to her face, and we must always praise her beauty: if you look at another woman, she thinks that she is out of favour. She must be called my lady, her birth-day must be kept, we must swear by her health and wish that she may survive us, respect must be paid to the nurse, to the nursemaid, to the father's slave, to the foster-child, to the handsome hanger-on, to the curled darling who manages her affairs, and to the eunuch who ministers to the safe indulgence of her lust: names which are only a cloak for adultery. Upon whomsoever she sets her heart, they must have her love though they want her not. If you give her the management of the whole house, you must yourself be her slave. If you reserve something for yourself, she will not think you are loyal to her; but she will turn to strife and hatred, and unless you quickly take care, she will have the poison ready. If you introduce old women, and soothsayers, and prophets, and vendors of jewels and silken clothing, you imperil her chastity; if you shut the door upon them, she is injured and fancies you suspect her. But what is the good of even a careful guardian, when an unchaste wife cannot be watched, and a chaste one ought not to be? For necessity is but a faithless keeper of chastity, and she alone really deserves to be called pure, who is free to sin if she chooses. if a woman be fair, she soon finds lovers; if she be ugly, it is easy to be wanton. It is difficult to guard what many long for. It is annoying to have what no one thinks worth possessing. But the misery of having an ugly wife is less than that of watching a comely one. Nothing is safe, for which a whole people sighs and longs. One man entices with his figure, another with his brains, another with his wit, another with his open hand. Somehow, or sometime, the fortress is captured which is attacked on all sides. Men marry, indeed, so as to get a manager for the house, to solace weariness, to banish solitude; but a faithful slave is a far better manager, more submissive to the master, more observant of his ways, than a wife who thinks she proves herself mistress if she acts in opposition to her husband, that is, if she does what pleases her, not what she is commanded. But friends, and servants who are under the obligation of benefits received, are better able to wait upon us in sickness than a wife who makes us responsible for her tears (she will sell you enough to make a deluge for the hope of a legacy), boasts of her anxiety, but drives her sick husband to the distraction of despair. But if she herself is poorly, we must fall sick with her and never leave her bedside. Or if she be a good and agreeable wife (how rare a bird she is!), we have to share her groans in childbirth, and suffer torture when she is in danger. A wise man can never be alone. He has with him the good men of all time, and turns his mind freely wherever he chooses. What is inaccessible to him in person he can embrace in thought. And, if men are scarce, he converses with God.hyperlink He is never less alone than when alone. Then again, to marry for the sake of children, so that our name may not perish, or that we may have support in old age, and leave our property without dispute, is the height of stupidity. For what is it to us when we are leaving the world if another bears our name, when even a son does not all at once take his father's title, and there are countless others who are called by the same name. Or what support in old age is he whom you bring up, and who may die before you, or turn out a reprobate? Or at all events when he reaches mature age, you may seem to him long in dying. Friends and relatives whom you can judiciously love are better and safer heirs than those whom you must make your heirs whether you like it or not. Indeed, the surest way of having a good heir is to ruin your fortune in a good cause while you live, not to leave the fruit of your labour to be used you know not how."



Footnotes



309 The notorious epicure of the time of Augustus and Tiberius.



310 Paxamus wrote a treatise on cooking, which, Suidas states, was arranged in alphabetical order.



311 1 John ii. 15 sq.



312 1 John iii. 2, 1 John iii. 3.



313 1 John iv. 7. R. V. "that we may have."



314 Jude, 23.



315 xiv. 1 sq.



316 Rev. vii. 5 sq.



317 Apoc. xiv. 3, Apoc. xiv. 4.



318 or they may say.



319 2 Tim. ii. 20, 2 Tim. ii. 21.



320 Virg. Aen i. 317.



321 Virg. Aen. vii. 803: id. xi. 535.



322 Leos was the hero from whom the tribe Leontis derived its name. Once when Athens was suffering from famine or plague, the oracle at Delphi demanded that his daughters should be sacrificed. The father complied. The shrine called Leocorium was erected by the Athenians to their honour.



323 Jerome's memory appears to be at fault. When the Greek fleet was on its way to Troy, it was detained by a calm at Aulis. The seer Calchas advised that Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon should be sacrificed. See Dict. of Ant.



324 According to the law of Numa, the punishment of a Vestal Virgin for violating the vow of chastity was stoning to death. Tarquinius Priscus first enacted that the offender should be buried alive, after being stripped of her badges of office, scourged and attired like a corpse. "From the time of the triumvirs each [Vestal] was preceded by a lictor when she went abroad; consuls and praetors made way for them, and lowered their fasces; even the tribunes of the plebs respected their holy character, and if any one passed under their litter, he was put to death."



325 It is said, however, that Claudia (Quinta) was a Roman matron, not a Vestal Virgin. The soothsayers announced that only a chaste woman could move the vessel referred to. Claudia, who had been accused of incontinency, took hold of the rope, and the vessel forthwith followed her. b.c. 204.



326 Seneca.



327 In the year after the death of Alexander (b.c. 323), Leosthenes defeated Alexander's general Antipater, near Thermopylae. Antipater then threw himself into the town of Lamia (in Phthiotis in Thessaly) which thus gave its name to the war. Leosthenes pressed the siege with great vigour, but was killed by a blow from a stone.



328 Another name for Messana (or Messene,, derived from the Mamertini, a people of Campania, is some of whom were mercenaries in the army of the tyrant Agathocles, and were quartered in the town. At his death (b.c. 282) they rose and gained possession of it.



329 The semi-legendary hero of the second war between Sparta and Messene. He lived about b.c. 270.



330 The spring festival held in honour of Hyacinthus, the beautiful youth accidentally slain by Apollo, and from whose blood was said to have sprung the flower of the same name.



331 He succeeded Plato as president of the Academy (b.c. 347-339). His works are all lost.



332 One of Aristotle's pupils, and author of a number of works, none of which are extant.



333 Diogenes Laërtius (so named from Laërte in Cilicia), who probably lived in the end century after Christ, in the Third Book of his "Lives of the Philosophers" refers to a treatise by Anaxelides on the same subject. It has therefore been conjectured that Jerome may have written Philosophica Historia for philosophiae.



334 Timaeus of Locri, in Italy, a Pythagorean philosopher, is said to have been a teacher of Plato. There is an extant work bearing his name; but its genuineness is considered doubtful, and it is in all probability only an abridgment of Plato's dialogue of Timaeus.



335 Damo. Pythagoras is said to have entrusted his writings to her, and to have forbidden her to give them to any one. She strictly observed the command, although she was in extreme poverty, and received many requests to sell them. According to some accounts Pythagoras had another daughter, Myia.



336 Flourished about b.c. 540-510.



337 Clement of Alexandria (died about a.d. 220) in his Stromata (i.e. literally, patchwork) or Miscellanies, Bk. iv., relates the same story and gives the names of the daughters. The Diodorus referred to in the text lived at Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Sorer (b.c. 323-285), by whom he was said to have been surnamed Cronos or Saturn, on account of his inability to solve at once some dialectic problem when dining with the king, perhaps with a play upon the word chronos (time), or with a sarcastic allusion to Crones as the introducer of the arts of civilized life. The philosopher is said to have taken the disgrace so much to heart, that he wrote a treatise on the problem, and then died in despair. Another account derives his name from his teacher Apollonius Cronus.



338 Born about b.c. 213, died b.c. 129. He was the determined opponent of the Stoics, and maintained that neither our senses nor our understanding gives us a safe criterion of truth.



339 The poetical name of Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor and mother of Romulus and Remus.



340 According to the legend she stabbed herself on the funeral pyre. Jerome ignores the modifications introducedinto the legend by Virgil, who, in defiance of the common chronology, makes Dido a contemporary of Aeneas, and represents her as destroying herself when forsaken by the hero.



341 Hasdrubal and his family, with 900 deserters and desperadoes, retired into the temple of Aesculapius, as if to make a brave defence. But the commandant's heart failed him; and, slipping out alone, be threw himself at the feet of Scipio, and craved for pardon. His wife, standing on the base of the temple, was near enough to witness the sight, and reproaching her husband with cowardice, cast herself with her children into the flames which were now wrapping the Citadel round on all sides. b.c. 146.



342 Son of Nicias the celebrated Athenian general.



343 She succeeded Mausolus and reigned b.c. 352-350.



344 She was the wife of Agron, and assumed the sovereign power on the death of her husband, b.c. 231. War was declared against her by Rome in consequence of her having caused the assassination of an ambassador, and in 228 she obtained peace at the cost of the greater part of her dominions.



345 Cyropaedeia, Book vii.



346 The wife of Candaules, also called Myrsilus. She was exhibited to Gyges, who, after the murder of her husband, married her. Herod. B. i.



347 The story, as is well known, formed the subject of the play by Euripides bearing the heroine's name, which was brought out about b.c. 438.



348 Protesilaus was the first of the Greeks to fall at Troy. According to some accounts he was slain by Hector. When her husband was slain Laodamia begged the gods to allow her to converse with him for only 3 hours. The request having been granted, Hermes led Protesilaus back to the upper world, and when he died a second time, Laodamia died with him.



349 The wife of L. Tarquinius Collatinus, whose rape by Sextus led to the dethronement of Tarquinius Superbus and the establishment of the republic.



350 Over the Carthaginian fleet near Mylae, 260 b.c.



351 One of the assassins of Julius Caesar. Jerome appears to be at fault here. Porcia, the daughter of Cato by his first wife Atilia, before marrying Brutus in 45 b.c., had been married to M. Bibulus and had borne him three children. He died in 48. After the death of Brutus in 42 she put an end to her own life, probably by the fumes of a charcoal fire.



352 Marcia is related to have been ceded by Cato to his friend Hortensius. She continued to live with the latter until his death, when she returned to Cato.



353 It has been conjectured that instead of "Marcia, Cato's younger daughter," a few lines above, we should read Porcia.



354 Probably the daughter of Cato by his second wife Marcia.



355 Jerome, apparently, makes a mistake here. Valeria, sister of the Messalas, married Sulla towards the end of his life. Valeria, the widow of Galerius, after the death of her husband in 311, rejected the proposals of Maximinus. Her consequent sufferings are related by Gibbon in his fourteenth chapter.



356 The Greek philosopher to whom Aristotle bequeathed his library and the originals of his own writings. He died b.c. 287, after being President of the Academy for 35 years. If he were the author of the book here referred to, it is not to be found among his extant writings.



357 Cicero at the beginning of the third book of the De Officiis, makes Cato quote this saying as one frequently in the mouth of Publius Scipio.