“We have seen princes in France, who, at the age of eighteen, were capable of assisting a poet, as well with respect to the conduct and arrangement of his subject; as in what related to the manners, the diction, and the thoughts. Menander published his first piece at twenty years of age. It is clear, then, that there have been persons of eighteen, capable of assisting a poet. It appears, moreover, that the enemies of Terence did not publish this imputation against him till the latter years of his life, for the poet complains of it only in the prologues to the Self-tormentor and the Brothers: the first of which was played three years, and the last but one year before his death. When the first appeared, he was thirty-one, and Scipio twenty-two: and when the last was published, he was thirty-four, and Scipio was twenty-five.”――MADAME DACIER. NOTE 27. _Cneus Sulpicius Gallus._ Cneus Sulpicius Galba, surnamed Gallus, was by no means the least illustrious member of the noble family of the Sulpicii, and filled the office of Consul for the year in which the Andrian was acted. The first of the Sulpicii took the name of _Galba_, from his diminutive stature, that word signifying “_a small insect_;” and the name was afterwards assumed by several of his descendants. NOTE 28. _Who procured the representation of comedies at the Consular Games._ The Ludi Consulares and Ludi Consuales were probably the same, as we have no account of the institution of any games particularly in honour of the Consuls, to be celebrated either at their entering on, or resigning their office; for the _Latinæ Feriæ_, though superintended particularly by the Consuls, and a part of their office, were not called Consular Games. The Consual, or Consular Games were instituted on the following occasion. Romulus, the first king of Rome, had no sooner assumed the government of the small band of adventurers who were the ancestors of that illustrious race of heroes, who long held all the nations of the earth in subjection, than he found his kingdom in danger of being totally destroyed in its birth; as none of the inhabitants of the neighbouring states were willing to form a matrimonial alliance with his subjects; many of whom were refuged criminals and exiled foreigners. To obtain wives for his people, he was compelled to have recourse to a stratagem, which Plutarch describes as follows: “_He (Romulus) circulated a report that he had discovered, concealed under ground, the altar of a certain god, whom they called_ CONSUS, _the God of counsel, whose proper appellation is Neptunus Equestris, or Neptune, the inventor of riding; for, except at horse-races, when it is exposed to sight, this altar is kept covered in the great circus; and, it was said, that it was not improperly concealed, because all counsels ought to be kept secret and hidden.