[336] _Canere_ is used in different ways: _tubicen canit signum_, 'the trumpeter blows the signal;' _tubicen canit_, 'the trumpeter blows (his instrument);' _signa canuntur_, 'signals are blown' or 'given;' and lastly, _signa canunt_, 'the signals sound.' The last expression is the one used in our passage. [337] _Rupe aspera_, &c. 'For in accordance with the nature of the plain between hills on the left-hand side, and on the right a rugged rock, he drew up (only) eight cohorts in front.' A simpler construction would have been _et rupem asperam a dextra_, but the manuscripts are decidedly in favour of the ablative, which must be considered as an ablative absolute, and as forming a distinct clause. Other editions have the correction _rupis aspera_, 'the rough part of a rock' (_aspera_ being the neut. plur.), but this is a poetical expression. See Zumpt, S 435. [338] Literally, 'The signals (_vexilla_) of the other cohorts he places in the rear as a reserve, more closely together.' _Signa_ here denotes the separate divisions of the troops; that is, the cohorts and the three maniples in each cohort, which are distinguished from one another by their flags or banners (_vexilla_). When an army was drawn up in a spacious plain, a space was left between the several divisions, but in this case, the plain being too narrow, there were no such spaces. [339] 'From among these who were drawn up as a reserve, he draws, for the purpose of strengthening the van, all centurions, picked men (in apposition), and the volunteers who had not been enlisted, as well as the ablest of the common soldiers who were provided with arms.' The word _lectos_ belonging to _centuriones_, shows that Catiline had appointed to the office of centurions only chosen men who were personally known to him as able soldiers. _Evocati_ were those soldiers in a Roman army who did not serve in the ranks of the other common soldiers, but as a separate corps, and were exempt from the ordinary military duties of standing as sentinels, making fortifications, foraging, and the like. They derived their name from the fact that they were invited (_evocare_) by the general to serve in the army as volunteers; they, moreover, were generally more advanced in years than the regular troops. [340] _Curare_, 'to command.' [341] Catiline himself stood nearest the standard (eagle) with his most faithful followers, whose personal fate depended upon him; that is, the freedmen of his family and the tenant farmers of his estates. The Roman nobles, as early as that time, used to parcel out their estates in small farms, which were tenanted especially by their freedmen, who were thus patronised by their former masters. [342] _Pedibus aeger_. He had the gout. Dion Cassius, a later historian of Rome, who wrote in Greek, states that Antonius only pretended to