100 PROSERPINA. 



Roman history. I say, to learn with me, because I don't 

 know any Roman history except the two first books of Livy, 

 and little bits here and there of the following six or seven. 

 I only just know enough about it to be able to make out the 

 bearings and meaning of any fact that I now learn. The 

 greater number of modern historians know, (if honest enough 

 even for that,) the facts, or something that may possibly be 

 like the facts, but haven't the least notion of the meaning of 

 them. So that, though I have to find out everything that I 

 want in Smith's dictionary, like any schoolboy, I can usually 

 tell you the significance of what I so find, better than perhaps 

 even Mr. Smith himself could. 



18. In the 586th page of Mr. Smith's volume, you have it 

 written that ' Calvus,' bald-head, was the name of a family of 

 the Licinia gens ; that the man of whom we hear earliest, as 

 so named, was the first plebeian elected to military tribune- 

 ship in B.C. 400 ; and that the fourth of whom we hear, was 

 surnamed l Stolo,' because he was so particular in pruning 

 away the Stolons (stolones), or useless young shoots, of his 

 vines. 



We must keep this word 'stolon,' therefore, for these young 

 suckers springing from an old root. Its derivation is uncer- 

 tain ; but the main idea meant by it is one of uselessness, 

 sprouting without occasion or fruit ; and the words ' stolidus * 

 and 'stolid' are really its derivatives, though we have lost 

 their sense in English by partly confusing them with ' solid ' 

 which they have nothing to do with. A ' stolid ' person is 

 essentially a ' useless sucker ' of society ; frequently very leafy 

 and graceful, but with no good in him. 



19. Nevertheless, I won't allow our vegetable ' stolons ' to be 

 despised. Some of quite the most beautiful forms of leafage 

 belong to them ; even the foliage of the olive itself is never 

 seen to the same perfection on the upper branches as in the 

 young ground-rods in which the dual groups of leaves crowd 

 themselves in their haste into clusters of three. 



But, for our point of Latin history, remember always that in 

 400 B.C., just a year before the death of Socrates at Athens, this 

 family of Stolid persons manifested themselves at Rome, 



