[681] This ideal personage, who has been mentioned before, AUGUSTUS,
c. lxviii., was the goddess Cybele, the wife of Saturn, called also Rhea,
Ops, Vesta, Magna, Mater, etc. She was painted as a matron, crowned with
towers, sitting in a chariot drawn by lions. A statue of her, brought
from Pessinus in Phrygia to Rome, in the time of the second Punic war,
was much honoured there. Her priests, called the Galli and Corybantes,
were castrated; and worshipped her with the sound of drums, tabors,
pipes, and cymbals. The rites of this goddess were disgraced by great
indecencies.

[682] Otherwise called Orcus, Pluto, Jupiter Infernus, and Stygnis. He
was the brother of Jupiter, and king of the infernal regions. His wife
was Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, whom he carried off as she was
gathering flowers in the plains of Enna, in Sicily. The victims offered
to the infernal gods were black: they were killed with their faces bent
downwards; the knife was applied from below, and the blood was poured
into a ditch.

[683] A town between Mantua and Cremona.

[684] The temple of Castor. It stood about twelve miles from Cremona.
Tacitus gives some details of this action. Hist. ii. 243.

[685] Both Greek and Latin authors differ in the mode of spelling the
name of this place, the first syllable being written Beb, Bet, and Bret.
It is now a small village called Labino, between Cremona and Verona.

[686] Lenis was a name of similar signification with that of
Tranquillus, borne by his son, the author of the present work. We find
from Tacitus, that there was, among Otho's generals, in this battle,