Etruria for instruction.

[677] See before, note, c. i. The Principia was a broad open space,
which separated the lower part of the Roman camp from the upper, and
extended the whole breadth of the camp. In this place was erected the
tribunal of the general, when he either administered justice or harangued
the army. Here likewise the tribunes held their courts, and punishments
were inflicted. The principal standards of the army, as it has been
already mentioned, were deposited in the Principia; and in it also stood
the altars of the gods, and the images of the Emperors, by which the
soldiers swore.

[678] See NERO, c. xxxi. The sum estimated as requisite for its
completion amounted to 2,187,500 pounds of our money.

[679] The two last words, literally translated, mean "long trumpets;"
such as were used at sacrifices. The sense is, therefore, "What have I
to do, my hands stained with blood, with performing religious
ceremonies!"

[680] The Ancile was a round shield, said to have fallen from heaven in
the reign of Numa, and supposed to be the shield of Mars. It was kept
with great care in the sanctuary of his temple, as a symbol of the
perpetuity of the Roman empire; and that it might not be stolen, eleven
others were made exactly similar to it.

[681] This ideal personage, who has been mentioned before, AUGUSTUS,
c. lxviii., was the goddess Cybele, the wife of Saturn, called also Rhea,
Ops, Vesta, Magna, Mater, etc. She was painted as a matron, crowned with
towers, sitting in a chariot drawn by lions. A statue of her, brought
from Pessinus in Phrygia to Rome, in the time of the second Punic war,
was much honoured there. Her priests, called the Galli and Corybantes,
were castrated; and worshipped her with the sound of drums, tabors,
pipes, and cymbals. The rites of this goddess were disgraced by great
indecencies.

[682] Otherwise called Orcus, Pluto, Jupiter Infernus, and Stygnis. He
was the brother of Jupiter, and king of the infernal regions. His wife
was Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, whom he carried off as she was
gathering flowers in the plains of Enna, in Sicily. The victims offered
to the infernal gods were black: they were killed with their faces bent
downwards; the knife was applied from below, and the blood was poured
into a ditch.

[683] A town between Mantua and Cremona.

[684] The temple of Castor. It stood about twelve miles from Cremona.
Tacitus gives some details of this