36. Numbers 15. 32-36.
37. Ibid. 11.
38. Proverbs 10. 23.
39. See Tertullian De spectaculis 10-11.
40. I Timothy 2. 2.
41. That the reference here is to the sack of Rome by Alaric in A.D. 410 is clearly shown by the order of events cited; if it had been intended, as those who use this passage to prove that Salvian's book was written after A.D. 455 assume, to refer to the Vandal sack, it would hardly have been made the first of a series of events ending with the Vandal destruction of Carthage some years before their sack of Rome.
42. Gaiseric captured Carthage in A.D. 439, after ten years of general Vandal control in Africa. The orthodox clergy were given their choice of slavery or exile, as were the nobles. Church property was given over to the Arians.
43. Luke 9. 24-25.
44. This phrase was overlooked by those commentators who held that Salvian was born in the province of Africa.
45. That is, in the first sack of the city of Treves.
46. The reference to Treves is obvious. This estimate of the city is supported by the general testimony of the writers of the early empire. Ausonius puts Treves in the fourth place in his Ordo urbium clarissimarum, the first being assigned to Rome, the second to Constantinople and Carthage, and third to Antioch, so that Treves is second only to Rome in western Europe. The choice of the city as the seat of the praetorian prefect of Gaul is a significant indication of its preeminence. See also Cod. Theod. XIII. 3. 11, De medicis et professoribus (a.D. 376): "For the most glorious city of Treves we have thought best to make a somewhat more ample allowance, that thirty annonae be paid to a teacher of rhetoric, twenty to a teacher of Latin grammar, and twelve to one of Greek, if a worthy one can be found."
47. That is, the Lernaean hydra. The labors of Heracles were a popular subject for light verse; cf. Ausonius Monosticha de XII aerumnis Herculis.
48. Brouwer, Antiquitatum et Annalium Treverensium libri XXV (1671), V. 14, p. 275, identified this city as Mayence, which seems to fit better than Metz or Cologne, the description of utter ruin. In VI. 8 supra, Salvian mentioned Mayence especially as having been destroyed, while Cologne was only spoken of as being full of the enemy. Haemmerle, op. cit., I. 18, follows Baluze in identifying the city here mentioned with Cologne instead.
49. Ecclesiasticus 19. 2.
50. I Samuel 26. 12.
51. Genesis 15. 16.
52. This phrase offers some support for the adoption of dates for the first three captures of the city close to each other in point of time: c.f. note 29 supra.
53. Haemmerle, op. cit., I. 22-23, pointed out the importance of this plural for dating the third sack of Treves, since the joint rule of Honorius and Constantius, a.d. 420-421, was the only possible date before Salvian's withdrawal to Lerins, when there could have been two imperatores in the West to whom such an appeal could have been made. Hence the third sack of the city must have taken place at about 420. He suggests further that the people of Treves hoped by the circuses to attract more residents for the rebuilding of the city.
54. The Vergilian phrase, imago mortis ( Aeneid II.360).
55. The lacuna indicated by Halm is supplied according to Pauly's conjecture.
56. Tribute had been paid to barbarians in return for guarantees of the integrity of the frontier since the early empire: beginning with the fourth century such tributes came to be due more and more to weakness, rather than to policy, till the condition was reached which Salvian here describes.
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