his vote in the affirmative, his reply was: "Although you show me the
military guard with which you have surrounded the Senate-house, although
you threaten me with death, yon will never induce me, for the little
blood still in an old man's veins, to pronounce Marius--who has been the
preserver of the city and of Italy--an enemy."

His daughter married Lucius Licinius Crassus, who had such reverence tor
his father-in-law, that, when a candidate for the consulship, he could
not persuade himself in the presence of Scaevola to cringe to the
people, or to adopt any of the usual self-humiliating methods of
canvassing for the popular vote.






SCIPIO'S DREAM.

PALIMPSESTS[Footnote: _Rubbed again_,--the parchment, or papyrus, having
been first polished for use, and then rubbed as clean as possible, to be
used a second time.]--the name and the thing--are at least as old as
Cicero. In one of his letters he banters his friend Trebatius for
writing to him on a palimpsest,[Footnote: _In palimpsesto_.] and marvels
what there could have been on the parchment which he wanted to erase.
This was a device probably resorted to in that age only in the way in
which rigid economists of our day sometimes utilize envelopes and
handbills. But in the dark ages, when classical literature was under a
cloud and a ban, and when the scanty demand for writing materials made
the supply both scanty and precarious, such manuscripts of profane