But with no erudite English writer is Terence Terentius, or Virgil Virgilius, or Horace Horatius.

Were I to speak of Livius, the erudite English listener would think that I alluded to an old author long prior to our dear historian.

And though we now talk of Sulla instead of Sylla, we hardly venture on Antonius instead of Antony.
Considering all this, I have thought it better to cling to the sounds which have ever been familiar to myself; and as I talk of Virgil and of Horace and Ovid freely and without fear, so shall I speak also of Pompey and of Antony and of Catiline.

In regard to Sulla, the change has been so complete that I must allow the old name to have re-established itself altogether.
It has been customary to notify the division of years in the period of which I am about to write by dating from two different eras, counting down from the building of Rome, A.U.C., or "anno urbis conditae," and back from the birth of Christ, which we English mark by the letters B.C., before Christ.

In dealing with Cicero, writers (both French and English) have not uncommonly added a third mode of dating, assigning his doings or sayings to the year of his age.