LEGEND OF SICCIUS DENTATUS

In the army sent against the Sabines, Siccius Dentatus was known as the bravest man.

They were soon followed by the other army from the Sabine frontier; for to them Icilius had gone, and Numitorius; and they found willing ears among men who were already enraged by the murder of old Siccius Dentatus.

Pyrrhus, on the arrival of Carthaginian reenforcements, returns to Italy; he is totally defeated by M. Curius Dentatus (at Beneventum), who exhibits in his triumphs the first elephants ever seen in Rome.

Caesar killed a million, Mahomet the second Turk, 300,000 persons; Sicinius Dentatus fought in a hundred battles, eight times in single combat he overcame, had forty wounds before, was rewarded with 140 crowns, triumphed nine times for his good service.

B.C. 290] Curius Dentatus, consul, having subdued the Samnites, and the rebellious Sabines, triumphs twice during his year of office.

Curius Dentatus, holding a levy, puts up to sale the goods of a person who refuses to answer to his name when called upon.

Forty years later another censor, Manius Curius Dentatus, brought a second supply, also by an underground channel, from the river Anio near Tibur (Tivoli), the water of which, never of the first quality, was used for the irrigation of gardens and the flushing of drains.

I had soon after the honour at a feast of attracting the eyes of Dentatus, one of those human beings whose only happiness is to dine.

Dentatus regaled me with foreign varieties, told me of measures that he had laid for procuring the best cook in France, and entertained me with bills of fare, prescribed the arrangement of dishes, and taught me two sauces invented by himself.

VIRGIL places Æneas in the port Velinus, which was made by Curius Dentatus.

It was Curius Dentatus who cut a gorge through the rocks to let the waters of the Velinus into the Nar.

[Fa.brish'.e.us], an old Roman, like Cincinnatus and Curius Dentatus, a type of the rigid purity, frugality, and honesty of the "good old times."

On the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena were painted the figures of Curius Dentatus and Cato, while the pavement of the Duomo showed Hermes Trismegistus instructing both a pagan and a Christian, and Socrates ascending the steep hill of virtue.

Thynnus dentatus.

Strombus dentatus, Gmel.

[The person referred to is Manius Curius Dentatus.

[Footnote 106: Varro here refers to the great economic change which was coming over Italian husbandry in the last days of the Republic, the disappearance of the small farms, the "septem jugera" which nurtured the early Roman heroes like Cincinnatus and Dentatus, and even the larger, but still comparatively small, farms which Cato describes, and the development of the latifundia given over to grazing.]

The drainage of Rosea has, therefore, always been a matter of concern to the live stock industry of Reate, and in B.C. 272 M. Curius Dentatus opened the first of several successful artificial canals (the last dating from the sixteenth century, A.D.), which still serve to lead the Velinus into the Nar at the renowned Cascate delle Marmore.

DENTATUS, M. CURIUS, a Roman of the old stamp; as consul gained two victories over rival States and two triumphs in one year; drove Pyrrhus out of Italy (275 B.C.), and brought to Rome immense booty, of which he would take nothing to himself; in his retirement took to tilling a small farm with his own hand.