(See Book IX., 1126.) The sun enters Aries
about March 20. The Ram is pictured among the
constellations with his head averse.
(5) See Book I., 463.
(6) See Mr. Heitland's introduction, upon the meaning of the
word "cardo". The word "belt" seems fairly to answer to the
two great circles or four meridians which he describes. The
word occurs again at line 760; Book V., 80; Book VII., 452.
(7) The idea is that the cold of the poles tempers the heat of
the equator.
(8) Fuso: either spacious, outspread; or, poured into the land
(referring to the estuaries) as Mr. Haskins prefers; or,
poured round the island. Portable leathern skiffs seem to
have been in common use in Caesar's time in the English
Channel. These were the rowing boats of the Gauls.
(Mommsen, vol. iv., 219.)
(9) Compare Book I., 519.
(10) Compare the passage in Tacitus, "Histories", ii., 45,
in which the historian describes how the troops of Otho
and Vitellius wept over each other after the battle and
deplored the miseries of a civil war. "Victi
victoresque in lacrumas effusi, sortem civilium armorum
misera laetitia detestantes."
(11) "Saecula nostra" may refer either to Lucan's own time or to
the moment arrived at in the poem; or it may, as Francken
suggests, have a more general meaning.
(12) "Petenda est"? -- "is it fit that you should beg for the
lives of your leaders?" Mr.
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