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 Rh prisoners, whose carcases were thrown down the Gemonian stairs, and drawn by hooks to the Tiber. Opimus was notorious for his riotous living, and for his brutality. He was as handsome as he was infamous—"formosus homo et famosus" Cicero speaks of his disreputable life, and records a jest he made. The Romans gave Ægitna to the citizens of Marseilles. In the tenth century it pertained to the abbey of Lerins, and in the Middle Ages maintained incessant contest with the tyrannical abbots, in efforts to obtain municipal freedom. Not till 1788—the year before the Revolution—did the town become free from its ecclesiastical masters. From Cannes in 1580 the plague spread which ravaged Provence. It was brought there by a ship from the Levant. To plague succeeded war. In 1746 Cannes succumbed to the Piedmontese and German forces that had crossed the Var. After taking and sacking Cannes, where they got little beyond fishing-nets, they plundered Grasse.

A little before this Admiral Matthews, who had taken Ventimiglia, captured the Ile Ste. Marguerite. The war which led to the blockading of the Ligurian coast by the English was occasioned by a trifle. In 1738 the English were thrown into a paroxysm of indignation by a tale that circulated, which was characterised by Burke as "The Fable of Jenkins's Ear." Jenkins was master of a small trading sloop in Jamaica, which seven years previously had been overhauled by a Spanish coastguard boat. The captain, disappointed at finding nothing contraband in the vessel, tore off one of Jenkins's ears, and bade him carry it to King George, and inform his Britannic Majesty that if he should come that way he would serve him in the same manner.