42 The Rev. J. Hamilton on the Punic Passage in Plautus, 



time of his being Hanno's host, Antidamas had become the purchaser of the boy, 

 Agorastocles : Antidamas, being then a rich old man but having become at the 

 period of Agorastocles' adolescence and his own death very old and very rich. 



Having thus gone through the part of the Punic which corresponds with the 

 Latin, we must stop to remark that this Latin verse is elliptical and obscure ; 

 and, that in order to fill up the ellipsis, we must endeavour to ascertain what it 

 was that Antidamas did, or accomplished, to which the words yec?'f and faciundum 

 refer. It was exactly what has been last hinted at, viz. : his having not only lived 

 to a great age, but as long as he lived continued to amass riches, which he is said to 

 have bequeathed to his adopted son, Agorastocles ; — adoptasse eum in divitias. 

 To complete the ellipsis on this principle we should insert some such word as 

 lucrum ; grandcevum ilium, testimonium horum est, fecisse lucrum sibi quod 

 faciundum fuit. Certain it is, that one of the most common Hebrew words for 

 riches is ^tn chil, and that chil^*\X},X or rather ^"in n** ytli ckil, immediately 

 follows the equivalent for fecisse, and lies between it and the equivalent for 

 faciundum ; facere being here, in fact, equivalent to Horace's rem facere. 



That the phraseology ^ipl bl?D and ^in Hiyy* is that of the Hebrew Scrip- 

 tures will be shown presently. For the present let us proceed to the two Punic 

 phrases that remain besides those already elicited, viz : brimti and cont. 



If we are right, as I think the Hebraist must concede, in assigning to "j^n "JVD 

 ( phil chil) the sense of rem facere, lucrum facere, then yec«5se lucrum quod faci- 

 undum fuit must be understood to va^an fecisse lucrum pro virilisuo, summa 

 ope, in Scripture idiom, according to his ability ; " as of the ability that God 

 giveth ;" or, as in a passage very like this one in the antithetical repetition of the 

 word (fo, — Eccles. ix. 10. "Whatever thy hand findeth to do — do {with thy 

 might), Hebrew '?Tn5l3 with thy cohh. Fac quod assequitur manus tua ad 

 faciendum— facultate tua — as cohh has been given s-co-ntn ^ig^ ^n3 n^tlS 

 which exactly gives the last expression in this line. 



Of the explication we have offered of co-ntn and shall offer of brimti confir- 

 mation strong will develope itself when we come to collate the line with parallel 

 passages of Holy Writ. But with respect to the remaining unexplained expres- 

 sion we must first observe, that as money-making is the principal subject matter 



* In the Libyan spelled eel. 



