APPENDIX. The numerals which commence the paragraphs, refer to the numerals in the text. The numbers which precede the paragraphs, refer to the pages of this volume, in which the matters referred are to noted. Page 251. 1 TITUS Pomponius Atticus, to whom this discourse is addressed, was of an ancient family of Rome, of the equestrian order, the second in dignity amongst the Romans. Of all Cicero's friends he appears to have been the most intimate and the most esteemed: for of the thirty-six books now extant of Tully's epistles, there are no less than sixteen, composing a distinct tome, directed to Atticus alone. His character in life, as left us by his intimate friend Cornelius Nepos, may be justly accounted the most beautiful we have received from antiquity of either Greek or Roman. Nor does it appear to have been paralleled in any age: for though he lived in the times of the greatest factions and divisions in Rome, as those of Sylla, Marius and Cinna, Cæsar and Pompey, Brutus aud Cassius, with Anthony, Lepidus, and Octavius (afterwards Augustus,) he conducted himself with such consummate prudence and integrity, that though caressed by all, he neither joined with, nor offended any of them. But being possessed of a vast estate, neither acquired on his part, nor improved by any lucrative measures whatsoever; for his patrimony was about the value of eight hundred thousand dollars; and by the will of a surly uncle, whom none besides could please, he received about four millions of dollars more, with many other legacies from his friends and admirers: of this vast estate, I say, besides his annual expence on a genteel and hospitable, yet frugal table, he spent the greatest part in relieving the distressed of every party (as each had their turns, Octavius excepted) without any other distinction than that of their worth and wants; and without any conditions or expectation of retribution. In his youth, to avoid being engaged. by his friends in the contentions with Sylla, he retired to Athens, where he spent most of his time in study, and the income of his estate in public and private benefactions ; and became so dear to the people there, that they almost adored him; yet he would never allow them to erect so much as one statue to his honor, though it was their constant practice to all such as deserved well of their state. From hence it was he took the name of Atticus (or Athenian, for so the word imports) here alluded to by Cicero. But his life may be read more at large in the English translation of the above author Cornelius Nepos. I shall therefore only add, that he was about two years older than Cicero, but survived him twelve years, dying in his 78th year, in the 722d after the building of Rome, and about 30 years before the birth of Our Saviour; Cicero being put to death by M. Antony's order, in his 64th year, and in the 710th of Rome. That his sister was married to Quintus Cicero, brother to the author; his daughter to the emperor Augustus's great friend and favorite M. Agrippa, whose daughter by her was the first and the beloved wife of Augustus's successor the emperor Tiberius; but he was obliged to part with her, to marry his father-in-law Augustus's daughter, the infamous Julia. I shall, in relation to both Cicero and Atticus, add a sentence of Seneca's, in his 21st epistle to Lucilius. "Cicero's epistles (says he) will not suffer Atticus's name to die. His son-in-law Agrippa, his grand-son-in-law Tiberius, or his grand-nephew, Drusus Cæsar, would have availed him nothing: amongst all those great names and affinities he would not have been 、remembered, had not Cicero grafted him into his own fame." Yet Atticus wrote some valuable books himself, but they are all lost. Page 251. 2 Ennius, born in Calabria, now part of the kingdom of Naples, under the consuls Q. Valerius and C. Mamilius, in the 515th year of Rome, as A. Gellius from Varro informs us; went to live in the island of Sardinia, to which Marcus Cato, the speaker in this tract, being sent prætor, and becoming acquainted with Ennius, he there began to learn Greek of him, and on his return brought him to Rome; which, Nepos says, was an act of greater importance than a triumph. He wrote the annals of Rome in verse, which, though highly valued by the Romans, and often quoted by Cicero, are now, excepting some fragments, entirely lost. He is more particularly mentioned again in this discourse. Page 251. 3 Titus Quinctus Flaminus, who, when consul in the year of Rome 556, overcame Philip, the last king of that name, and the last but one of Macedon; after which, at the great solemnity of the Isthmian games that then ensued, and at which there was a general concourse from all the neighboring parts and countries, he by public proclamation restored to the several states of Greece their ancient liberties, after they had been deprived of them, and continued in subjection to others, but principally to the kings of Macedon, above 120 years. This conquest, with his other actions, added greatly to the former lustre of his family, but it received a severe blow from this Cato, the principal speaker here; who, when he was censor, by virtue of that office, degraded Titus's brother Lucius Flaminus, who had also been consul, and bore other high offices, from his place in the senate; which is mentioned further on in this discourse, as by Cato himself, and the whole story is there given more particularly. [See note 63.] His life may be read at large amongst those of Plutarch. 4 From the revolution effected in the state, by the usurp ation of Julius Cæsar, who, without any other right or pretence to it, than that of the power of his army, the subjects as well as himself of the commonwealth, instead of obeying the senate's order to disband, he made war on his native country, pursued Pompey, who commanded the army of the senate, into Greece, and at Pharsalia in Thessaly entirely routed him; made himself, on his return to Rome, perpetual and absolute dictator, and became the first of the Roman emperors. For though about three years after, by the conspiracy of Brutus, Cassius, and others, in hopes of recovering their liberties, he was stabed in the senatehouse; yet his sister Julia's grandson Octavius, a youth then but of about eighteen years, whom he had by will made his heir, found means to get into the same seat, and clothe himself with the same power; and from him it wa ૨૧ continued (though only for four successions in his own, or rather in his wife Livia's family, who all proved tyrants, and two of the four, Caligula and Nero, mere monsters of cruelty) till Rome itself became a prey to the Goths, and other northern nations. But on mentioning this first of the Roman emperors, it may not be amiss here to observe of him, that though he was a person of the sublimest genius, adorned with every accomplishment of nature or art, and not at all of a cruel disposition, but on the contrary of a temper truly clement and generous; yet by the iniquity of the times, he seemed to have been sent into the world for the destruction of mankind: for Pliny, after a most exalted character of his abilities [Nat. Hist. 1. 7. c. 25] tells us, that he himself acknowleged he had in his wars destroyed the lives of 1,192,000 men, exclusive of these that fell in those horrid civil wars he engaged his country in; for which Lipsius, on mentioning this, [De constantia, lib. 2. c. 22] justly calls him, Pestem perniciemque generis humani—the pest and plague of human kind. And though the numbers of those that fell in their civil contentions are not mentioned, yet they may be guessed at, by comparing the two last cen-. sus taken of the men of Rome, that are mentioned by Livy in the epitomes of his books still extant; for 'tis noted in that of his 98th book, in the 682d year of the city, that the number was no less than 450,000 men, but in the year 706, on Cæsar's return from his victory over Pompey, the number was reduced to 150,000; so that the city of Rome alone, and chiefly by these contentions, lost two full thirds of her people, and she still continued to lose by the wars after Cæsar's death, carried on by Octavius (afterwards Augustus) and Antony, against Brutus and Cassius, &c. Page 251. 5 In what year of his life Cicero wrote this excellent little tract, does not clearly appear. He was born in the 647th year of Rome; J. Cæsar made himself master of the empire after his return from Egypt in the 706th year; after which, Cicero wrote most of his philosophical discourses. From his preface to his second book De divinatione, we find, that this was composed after his Academics, his books De finibus, his Tusculan questions, and those De natura deerum: and from the same and other hints we also learn, that it was wrote before those De divinatione, his Lælius, or of friendship, his excellent Offices, and his book De fato ; all which we find were wrote after Cæsar's death. [Vide his preface to Lælius, De officiis, lib. 2. and his preface to that De fato.] It is therefore probable he wrote this in the last year of Cæsar's life, who was murdered on the Ides (the 15th day) of March, A. U. 709, that is in Cicero's 63d year. He was himself murdered in his 64th year, by order of M. Antony, the next year after Cæsar's fall, Page 252. 6 Tithonus was said to be the son of Laomedon, king of Troy, of such admirable beauty, that, according to the fictions of the poets, Aurora the goddess of the morning, fell in love with him. And of her he obtained that he might live very long; which he did to that degree, that wearing gradually away, he shrunk at length into a grasshopper. The moral of which is plain, i. e. that Tithonus was very comely in his youth, an early riser, and regular in his life; that by these means he attained to a good old age, in which he still preserved his agility, but grew very thin, and became vastly altered from his former state, when in his bloom. 7 Marcus Portius Cato, of which name there were two persons very famous in the Roman history: and the lives of both are in Plutarch, an author now in the hands of most English readers of history. But of the eldest, who is the person intended here by Cicero, I shall add the following account from the great historian Livy. In b. 39. c. 40. speaking of the election of censors, in the 570th year of the city, for which there stood six candidates of the nobility, and as many of the commons, of whom Cato was one; (and he was perfectly novus homo, a new man; so they call those of obscure families who got offices in the state; but new as he was, he had been consul 11 years before, in the 36th of his age :) the historian, I say, having named the 12 candidates, proceeds thus: "But Marcus Portius Cato had vastly the |