to Cinna's tribunal. Cinna soon afterwards entered Rome; but Marius stopped at the gate, saying with gloomy and inauspicious sternness, that he was an exile, and forbidden to enter the city by the laws. If the people wanted his presence, they must repeal the sentence of banishment against him. It does not appear as if Cinna and Marius were on very good terms at this juncture; but community of crime and cruelty soon reconciled them. Ότι οἱ περὶ τὸν Κίνναν καὶ Μάριον συνεδρεύσανίες μετὰ τῶν ἐπιφανεσάτων ἡγεμόνων ἐβουλεύοντο, ὅπως βεβαίως καταςήσωσι τὴν εἰρήνην· τέλος ἔδοξεν αὐτοῖς τοὺς ἐπιφανεσάτους τῶν ἐχθρῶν, καὶ δυναμένους ἀμφισβητῆσαι περὶ πραγμάτων, πάνας ἀποκτεῖναι· ὅπως καθαρᾶς γενομένης τῆς ἰδίας αἱρέσεως καὶ μερίδος, ἀδεῶς τὸ λοιπὸν, καὶ ὡς ἂν βούλωνται, μετὰ τῶν φίλων διοικοῦσι τά καλὰ τήν ἡγεμονίαν. Thν hyeμovíav.- Ecloga ex libro Diodori, 38. Cinna at a subsequent period commanded the officers to declare him consul a third time, without even the formality of holding the comitia. He and his colleague Carbo continued themselves in the consulship the year following, 669, and 83 before Christ. Suetonius gives the following account of his daughter's marriage with Julius Cæsar:-" Julius Cæsar Divus, annum agens sextum decimum, patrem amisit: sequentibusque consulibus, dimissa Cossutia, quæ, familia equestri, sed admodum dives, prætextato desponsata fuerat, Corneliam Cinnæ quater consulis filiam, duxit uxorem, ex qua illi mox Julia nata est; neque ut repudiaret compelli a Dictatore Sulla ullo modo potuit."- Cap. 1. Great preparations were made against the Proconsul Sylla, but they made no impression on his courage or resolution. He wrote a letter to the senate, enumerating all his great actions, from the period of his quæstorship up to that of the consul. Y ate, against the Numidians, the Cimbri, and the Italians. He related his victories over Mithridates with much amplification, and expatiated largely on the number of nations he had reduced to obedience and allegiance to the republic. But on nothing did he value himself so highly, as that his camp had been an asylum for those of the Roman citizens, whom Cinna's cruel and profligate conduct had driven into banishment. The senate seems at this time to have lost all its firmness; and as it was dragooned into suffering Merula to abdicate, for the purpose of making terms with Cinna, so now this haughty and ostentatious letter produced the intended effect of intimidation. Cinna promised to obey the order, to raise no more troops while the negotiation with Sylla was pending. But practice makes perfect: and Cinna was a promisebreaker of long standing and repeated experience. No sooner had the deputies taken their departure from Rome, than the consuls made a progress through Italy. They enlisted soldiers, and formed different armies to oppose their enemy. But Cinna's career was to be closed abruptly, with what critics call poetical justice, and plain men look at as moral retribution. Some of the newly raised levies refused to embark for Dalmatia. Cinna assembled them, and threatened to enforce obedience. The soldiers, who could not expect such a breach of discipline to be forgiven by so vindictive a man, mutinied, and murdered him. It is stated by Plutarch, that in addition to the obvious motives for this mutiny, the hatred entertained against Cinna was enhanced by the suspicion that he had murdered Pompey, who lived to experience many vicissitudes, and to acquire the title of the Great. A circumstance is related respecting Cinna's conduct in his last moments, which points his tale with an important moral. To take a prominent part in civil broils, and to commit great personal crimes, both involve the necessity of strong nerves: but they do not necessarily imply mental courage of the genuine kind. Cinna, in his flight on the breaking out of the sedition, was overtaken by a centurion. That officer was the man who slew him but Cinna attempted to purchase the remission of the unauthorised sentence by falling on his knees, and offering a seal ring of great value as the price of his life. ON THE TITLES AND MYTHOLOGICAL CHARAC TER OF MERCURY. I HAVE already alluded to the practice of sentimental swearing among the Greeks. No people ever so appropriately suited the action to the word, the word to the action, the sound to the sense. Dealers in horse-flesh would never think of swearing by any one but Neptune: the flaxen-headed ploughboy invoked Ceres: the sly chapman prayed to Mercury, to superintend his buyings and sellings in the market. But Mercury, like those of his disciples who grace the dock at the Old Bailey, tacked an alias to the end of his name, according to the occasion or the place. When the man of business wanted him, he was 'Eguns 'Ayogaios, so named from ayoga, the market place. A statue of stone was raised to him in a city of Achaia called Pharæ, and he delivered oracular answers under a title suited to the occasion. What gave curiosity to this particular statue, was the unusual circumstance of its having a beard. A low altar of stone was placed before the statue, on which stood vases of brass soldered with lead to receive those contributions, so necessary to give flexibility to the mysterious tongue. Another of his employments was to preside over sleep and dreams; the night, and all that belonged to it. After praying to all the rest of the gods, men addressed Mercury last, and called upon him to send them a night of good dreams, as ὕπνου δολής. In the eighth book of Homer's Odyssey is the following passage : ̓Αμφὶ δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἑρμῖσιν χέε δέσματα κύκλῳ ἁπάν]η· On the word guio, the scholiast gives this explanation :—Τοῖς ποσὶ τῆς κλίνης. Ερμα γὰς ὥσπερ εἰσὶ τῆς κλίνης παρὰ τὸ ἐνείρεσθαι. But Eustathius furnishes us with a better etymology in reference to Mercury as the giver of sleep. Considering him in this capacity, they carved his images on the feet of the bed, and called them gives directly from his name. This seems a closer derivation than that of the scholiast, and still further appropriate as connecting the god of roguery with this humourous detection. Another of his titles was Xóvios, the Infernal, probably in allusion to the power of vegetation : for seeds of every kind were dedicated to him, and carefully preserved in a pot; and the people scrupulously abstained from making them articles of food. This particular consecration seems to have been a device of policy, to intimidate them from the premature waste of those productions, on which future subsistence and plenty were entirely to depend. Mercury was also Пouяaios, an epithet denoting a person conducting another on his way. In this capacity, he was master of the ceremonies to Pluto, |