1. Here, as in other passages of this section, Cicero closely follows the discussion in Plato’s Republic between Socrates and the aged Cephalus.

1. A small, insignificant island in the Aegean. Themistocles (c. 528–462 B.C.), victor of Salamis, was the creator of Athenian sea-power.

1. The leading Greek town of south Italy, captured in the Second Punic War (209 B.C.) by Quintus Fabius Maximus ‘the Delayer’, five times consul, twice dictator (d. 203 B.C.).

2. The Cincian Law forbade gifts which might defeat justice, and certain donations above a given amount (204 B.C.).

3. A slip by Cicero (or Cato); it was Salinator’s relative Marcus Livius Macatus who held the citadel.

4. This apparently democratic statesman and soldier proposed a law for the settlement of citizen-farmers on the public lands south of Ariminum confiscated from the Gauls. The date was not 228 B.C., as given by Cato here, but 232.

1. Athenian orator and teacher of rhetoric, 436–338 B.C. Gorgias, the most famous of the ’sophists’, is stated to have lived from 485 to c. 378.