] The Rhaetian wines had a great reputation; Virgil says,

------Ex quo te carmine dicam,
Rhaetica. Georg. ii. 96.

The vineyards lay at the foot of the Rhaetian Alps; their produce, we
have reason to believe, was not a very generous liquor.

[230] A custom in all warm countries; the siesta of the Italians in
later times.

[231] The strigil was used in the baths for scraping the body when in a
state of perspiration. It was sometimes made of gold or silver, and not
unlike in form the instrument used by grooms about horses when profusely
sweating or splashed with mud.

[232] His physician, mentioned c. lix.

[233] Sept. 21st, a sickly season at Rome.

[234] Feminalibus et tibialibus: Neither the ancient Romans or the
Greeks wore breeches, trews, or trowsers, which they despised as
barbarian articles of dress. The coverings here mentioned were swathings
for the legs and thighs, used mostly in cases of sickness or infirmity,
and when otherwise worn, reckoned effeminate. But soon after the Romans
became acquainted with the German and Celtic nations, the habit of
covering the lower extremities, barbarous as it had been held, was
generally adopted.

[235] Albula. On the left of the road to Tivoli, near the ruins of
Adrian's villa. The waters are sulphureous, and the deposit from them
causes incrustations on twigs and other matters plunged in the springs.
See a curious account of this stream in Gell's Topography, published by
Bohn, p 40.

[236] In spongam incubuisse, literally has fallen upon a sponge, as Ajax
is said to have perished by falling on his own sword.

[237] Myrobrecheis. Suetonius often preserves expressive Greek phrases
which Augustus was in the habit of using. This compound word meant
literally, myrrh-scented, perfumed.

[238] These are variations of language of small importance, which can
only be understood in the original language.

[239] It may create a smile to hear that, to prevent danger to the
public, Augustus decreed that no new buildings erected in a public
thoroughfare should exceed in height seventy feet. Trajan reduced it to
sixty.

[240] Virgil is said to have recited before him the whole of the second,
fourth, and sixth books of the Aeneid; and Octavia, being present, when
the poet came to the passage referring to her son, commencing, "Tu
Marcellus eris," was so much affected that she was carried out fainting.

[241] Chap. xix.

[242]