132 pliny's natiteal history. [Book XXXIII. 



we are in search of, and silver deeply chiselled around the 

 raarginal lines of the figures painted"^*' upon it ; and now we are 

 building up on our sideboards fresh tiers^^ of tables for sup- 

 porting the various dishes. Other articles of plate we nicely 

 pare away,^- it being an object that the file may remove as 

 much of the metal as possible. 



"We find the orator Calvus complaining that the saucepans 

 are made of silver ; but it has been left for us to invent a plan 

 of covering our very carriages^^ with chased silver, and it was 

 in our own age that Poppaea, the wife of the Emperor Nero, 

 ordered her favourite mules to be shod even with gold ! 



CHAP. 50. — INSTANCES OY THE FEUGALITY OP THE ANCIENTS IN 

 EEFEEENCE TO SILVER PLATE. 



The younger Scipio Africanus left to his heir thirty-two 

 pounds' weight of silver ; the same person who, on his triumph 

 over the Carthaginians, displayed four thousand three hundred 

 and seventy pounds' weight of that metal. Such was the sum 

 total of the silver possessed by the whole of the inhabitants of 

 Carthage, that rival of Rome for the empire of the world ! 

 How many a Eoman since then has surpassed her in his dis- 

 play of plate for a single table ! After the destruction of 

 Numantia, the same Africanus gave to his soldiers, on the 

 day of his triumph, a largess of seven denarii each — and right 

 worthy were they of such a general, when satisfied with such 

 a sum ! His brother, Scipio Allobrogicus,^'* was the very 

 first who possessed one thousand pounds' weight of silver, 



'^ " Asperitatemque excise circa liniarum picturas," — a passage, the 

 obscurity of which, as Littre remarks, seems to set translation at defiance. 



3^ He alludes, probably to tiers of shelves on the beaufets or sideboards 

 ■ — " repositoria " — similar to those used for the display of plate in the 

 middle ages. Petronius Arbiter speaks of a round "repositorium," 

 which seems to have borne a considerable resemblance to our " dumb 

 waiters." The " repositoria " here alluded to by Pliny were probably 

 made of silver. '^^ " Interradimus." 



■"^^ '< CarrucGB." The " carruca " was a carriage, the name of which 

 only occurs under the emperors, the present being- the first mention of it. 

 It had four wheels and was used in travelling, like the •' carpentum." 

 Martial, B. iii, Epig. 47, uses the word as synonymous with '* rheda." 

 Alexander Severus allowed the senators to have them plated with silver. 

 The name is of Celtic origin, and is the basis of the mediaeval word " ea- 

 rucate," and the French carrosse. 



'■^^ So called from his victory over the Allobroges. 



