Note 209 — Chapter IV · MEXICAN HIEROGLYPHICS—MANUSCRIPTS—ARITHMETIC—CHRONOLOGY—ASTRONOMY

I borrow the words of the summons by which the people were called to the ludi seculares, the secular games of ancient Rome, “quos nec spectâsset quisquam, nec spectaturus esset.” (Suetonius, Vita Tib. Claudii, lib. 5.) The old Mexican chroniclers warm into something like eloquence in their descriptions of the Aztec festival. (Torquemada, Monarch. Ind., lib. 10, cap. 33.—Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 1, cap. 5.—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva-España, lib. 7, cap. 9-12. See, also, Gama, Descripcion, Parte 1, pp. 52-54,—Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. ii. pp. 84-86.) The English reader will find a more brilliant coloring of the same scene in the canto of Madoc above cited,—“On the Close of the Century.”