The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 08: OthoSuetonius
History
The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 08: Otho
Suetonius
Emperors -- Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-284 A.D.
[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 action. Hist. ii. 243.
[685] Both Greek and Latin authors differ in the mode of spelling the
name of this place, the first syllable being written Beb, Bet, and Bret.
It is now a small village called Labino, between Cremona and Verona.
[686] Lenis was a name of similar signification with that of
Tranquillus, borne by his son, the author of the present work. We find
from Tacitus, that there was, among Otho's generals, in this battle,
another person of the name of Suetonius, whose cognomen was Paulinus;
with whom our author's father must not be confounded. Lenis was only a
tribune of the thirteenth legion, the position of which in the battle is
mentioned by Tacitus, Hist. xi. 24, and was angusticlavius, wearing only
the narrow stripe, as not being of the senatorial order; while Paulinus
was a general, commanding a legion, at least, and a consular man; having
filled that Office A.U.C. 818. There seems no doubt that Suetonius
Paulinus was the same general who distinguished himself by his successes
and cruelties in Britain. NERO, c. xviii., and note.
Not to extend the present note, we may shortly refer to our author's
having already mentioned his grandfather (CALIGULA, c. xix.); besides
other sources from which he drew his information. He tells us that he
himself was then a boy. We have now arrived at the times in which his
father bore a part. Such incidental notices, dropped by historical
writers, have a certain value in enabling us to form a judgment on the
genuineness of their narratives as to contemporaneous, or recent, events.
[687] A.U.C. 823.
[688] Jupiter, to prevent the discovery of his amour with Io, the
daughter of the river Inachus, transformed her into a heifer, in which
metamorphosis she was placed by Juno under the watchful inspection of
Argus; but flying into Egypt, and her keeper being killed by Mercury, she
recovered her human shape, and was married to Osiris. Her husband
afterwards became a god of the Egyptians, and she a goddess, under the
name of Isis. She was represented with a mural crown on her head, a
cornucopia in one hand, and a sistrum (a musical instrument) in the
other.
End of Project Gutenberg's M. Salvius Otho (Otho),
by C. Suetonius Tranquillus
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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