[120] After the taking of Athens by Sylla, “though such numbers were put to the sword, there were as many who laid violent hands upon themselves in grief for their sinking country. What reduced the best men among them to this despair of finding any mercy or moderate terms for Athens, was the well-known cruelty of Sylla: yet, partly by the intercession of Midias and Calliphon, and the exiles who threw themselves at his feet--partly by the entreaties of the senators who attended him in that expedition, and being himself satiated with blood besides, he was at last prevailed upon to stop his hand; and in compliment to the ancient Athenians, he said, ‘he forgave the many for the sake of the few, the _living for the dead_.’”--Plutarch. [121] “At the hour of midnight the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the imperial city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable a portion of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.”--_Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vol. v. p. 311. [122] The plane-tree was much cultivated among the Romans, on account of its extraordinary shade; and they used to nourish it with wine instead of water, believing (as Sir W. Temple observes) that “this tree loved that liquor as well as those who used to drink it under its shade.”--See the notes to Melmoth’s _Pliny_. [123] Sicily was anciently considered as the favoured and peculiar dominion of Ceres. THE WIFE OF ASDRUBAL.