[206]According to some authorities, he was a Lydian. He derived his wealth from his gold mines in the neighborhood of Celænæ in Phrygia, and would appear, in spite of Pliny’s reservation, to have been little less than a king. His five sons accompanied Xerxes; but Pythius, alarmed by an eclipse of the sun, begged that the eldest might be left behind. Upon this, Xerxes had the youth put to death, and his body cut in two, the army being ordered to march between the portions, which were placed on either side of the road. His other sons were all slain in battle, and Pythius passed the rest of his life in solitude. [207]So called from the silversmiths who respectively introduced them. [208]“Æris Metalla.” The word “Æs” does not correspond to our word “brass;” the brass of the moderns being a compound of copper and zinc, while the “Æs” of the ancients was mostly composed of copper and tin, and therefore is more correctly designated by the word “bronze.” Mr. Westmacott says that the ancient “Æs” has been found, upon analysis, to contain no zinc, but in nearly every instance to be a mixture of copper and tin, like our bronze. Beckmann says, on the other hand, that the mixture of zinc and copper now called “brass,” first discovered by ores, abundant in zinc, _was certainly known to the ancients_. [209]The colleges of the priests and of the augurs being the first two associated bodies. [210]B.C. 146. [211]Pisistratus. These statues are mentioned elsewhere by Pliny as being the workmanship of Praxiteles. [212]The Luperci were the priests of Pan, who, at the celebration of their games, called Lupercalia, were in the habit of running about the streets of Rome, with no other covering than a goat’s skin tied about the loins. [213]Pliny has forgotten the gilded chariot, with six horses, which Cneius Cornelius dedicated in the Capitol, two hundred years before Augustus; there is also an ancient inscription which mentions chariots of this description. [214]By one Leptines, at Laodicea. [215]The mode in which the fingers were placed, so as to serve the purpose here indicated, is supposed to have been by their forming the letters which were the Roman numerals for the figures in question. [216]The Colossus at Rhodes was begun by Chares, but he committed suicide, in consequence of having made some mistake in the estimate; the work was completed by Laches, also an inhabitant of Lindos. It remained on the spot where it was thrown down for nearly nine hundred years, until the year 653 A.D., when Moavia, khalif of the Saracens, after the capture of Rhodes, sold the materials; it is said that it required nine hundred camels to remove the pieces. The Bartholdi statue of “Liberty enlightening the World” is even larger than the Colossus at Rhodes.