iii.
4) he speaks of only two Decii as having signalized themselves in this manner.
[117] The Rogator, who collected the votes, and pronounced who was the person chosen.

There were two sorts of Rogators; one was the officer here mentioned, and the other was the Rogator, or speaker of the whole assembly.
[118] Which was Sardinia, as appears from one of Cicero's epistles to his brother Quintus.
[119] Their sacred books of ceremonies.
[120] The war between Octavius and Cinna, the consuls.
[121] This, in the original, is a fragment of an old Latin verse, _----Terram fumare calentem._ [122] The Latin word is _principatus_, which exactly corresponds with the Greek word here used by Cicero; by which is to be understood the superior, the most prevailing excellence in every kind and species of things through the universe.
[123] The passage of Aristotle to which Cicero here refers is lost.
[124] He means the Epicureans.
[125] Here the Stoic speaks too plain to be misunderstood.

His world, his _mundus_, is the universe, and that universe is his great Deity, _in quo sit totius naturae principatus_, in which the superior excellence of universal nature consists.
[126] Athens, the seat of learning and politeness, of which Balbus will not allow Epicurus to be worthy.
[127] This is Pythagoras's doctrine, as appears in Diogenes Laertius.
[128] He here alludes to mathematical and geometrical instruments.
[129] Balbus here speaks of the fixed stars, and of the motions of the orbs of the planets.

He here alludes, says M.Bonhier, to the different and diurnal motions of these stars; one sort from east to west, the other from one tropic to the other: and this is the construction which our learned and great geometrician and astronomer, Dr.Halley, made of this passage.
[130] This mensuration of the year into three hundred and sixty-five days and near six hours (by the odd hours and minutes of which, in every fifth year, the _dies intercalaris_, or leap-year, is made) could not but be known, Dr.Halley states, by Hipparchus, as appears from the remains of that great astronomer of the ancients.

We are inclined to think that Julius Caesar had divided the year, according to what we call the Julian year, before Cicero wrote this book; for we see, in the beginning of it, how pathetically he speaks of Caesar's usurpation.
[131] The words of Censorinus, on this occasion, are to the same effect.