The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books VIII-XV

77.Minturnæ.]—Ver. 716. This was a town of Latium; the marshes in its neighbourhood produced pestilential exhalations.

78.She for whom.]—Ver. 716. This was Caieta, who, being buried there by her foster-child Æneas, gave her name to the spot.

79.Abode of Antiphates.]—Ver. 717. Formiæ.

80.Trachas.]—Ver. 717. This place was also called ‘Anxur.’ Its present name is Terracina. Livy mentions it as lying in the marshes.

81.Antium.]—Ver. 718. This was the capital of the ancient Volscians.

82.Castrum.]—Ver. 727. This was ‘Castrum Inui,’ or ‘the tents of Pan;’ an old town of the Rutulians.

83.Numidians.]—Ver. 754. The Numidians under Syphax, together with Juba, King of Mauritania, aided Cato, Scipio, and Petreius, who had been partizans of Pompey, against Julius Cæsar, and were conquered by him.

84.Pontus.]—Ver. 756. Cæsar conquered Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, king of Pontus, in one battle. It was on this occasion, according to Suetonius, that his despatch was in the words, ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici,’ ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’

85.Son of Atreus.]—Ver. 805. This was Menelaüs, from whom Paris was saved by Venus. See the Iliad, book III.

86.Mutina.]—Ver. 823. This was a place in Cisalpine Gaul, where Augustus defeated Antony, and took his camp.

87.Philippi.]—Ver. 824. Pharsalia was in Thessaly, and Philippi was in Thrace. He uses a poet’s license, in treating them as being the same battle-field, as they both formed part of the former kingdom of Macedonia. Pompey was defeated by Julius Cæsar at Pharsalia, while Brutus and Cassius were defeated by Augustus and Antony at Philippi. The fleet of the younger Pompey was totally destroyed off the Sicilian coast.

88.The wife.]—Ver. 826. Mark Antony was so infatuated as to divorce his wife, Octavia, that he might be enabled to marry Cleopatra.

89.Canopus.]—Ver. 828. This was a city of Egypt, situate on the Western mouth of the river Nile.

90.His hallowed wife.]—Ver. 836. Augustus took Livia Drusilla, while pregnant, from her husband, Tiberius Nero, and married her. He adopted her son Tiberius, and constituted him his successor.

91.With like years.]—Ver. 838. Julius Cæsar was slain when he was fifty-six years old. Augustus died in his seventy-sixth year.

92.Threefold world.]—Ver. 859. This is explained as meaning the realms of the heavens, the æther and the air; but it is difficult to guess exactly what is the Poet’s meaning here.

93.Companions of Æneas.]—Ver. 861. He probably refers to the Penates which Æneas brought into Latium. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says that he had seen them in a temple at Rome, and that they bore the figures of two youths seated and holding spears.