Chap. 50.] FRUQALTTY OF THE ANCIENTS. 133 



but Drusus Livius, when he was tribune of the people, possessed 

 ten thousand. As to the fact that an ancient warrior/^ a man, 

 too, who had enjoyed a triumph, should have incurred the notice 

 of the censor for being in possession of five pounds' weight of 

 silver, it is a thing that would appear quite fabulous at the 

 present day.^^ The same, too, with the instance of Catus 

 ^lius,^^ who, when consul, after being found by the JEtolian 

 ambassadors taking his morning meaP'* off of common earthen- 

 ware, refused to receive the silver vessels which they sent him ; 

 and, indeed, was never in possession, to the last day of his 

 life, of any silver at all, with the exception of two drinking- 

 cups, which had been presented to him as the reward of his 

 valour, by L. Paulus,^^ his father-in-law, on the conquest of 

 King Perseus. 



We read, too, that the Carthaginian ambassadors declared 

 that no people lived on more amicable terms among them- 

 selves than the Eomans, for that wherever they had dined 

 they had always met with the same^° silver plate. And yet, 

 by Hercules ! to my own knowledge, Pompeius Paulinus, son 

 of a Eoman of equestrian rank at Arelate, " a member, too, of 

 a family, on the paternal side, that v/as graced with the fur,*- 

 had with him, when serving with the army, and that, too, in 

 a war against the most savage nations, a service of silver plate 

 that weighed twelve thousand pounds ! 



*5 In allusion to the case of P. Cornelius Eufinus, the consul, who was 

 denounced in the senate by the censors C. Fahricius Luscinus and Q. .^mi- 

 lius Rufus, for being in possession of a certain quantity of silver pLate. 

 This story is also referred to in B. xviii. c. 8, where ten pounds is the 

 quantity mentioned. 



^s This is said ironically. 



37 Sextus iElius Poetus Catus, Consul B.C. 198. 



38 "Prandentera." 39 L. Paulus ^railius. 



*o It being lent from house to house. This, no doubt, was said ironi- 

 cally, and as a sneer at their poverty. 



*i Now Aries. It was made a military colony in the time of Augustus. 

 See B. iii. c. 5, and B. x. c- 57. 



^2 " Pellitura." There has been considerable doubt as to the meaning 

 of this, but it is most probable that the " privilege of the fur," or in other 

 words, a license to be clad in certain kinds of fur, was conferred on certain 

 men of rank' in the provinces. Holland considers it to be the old parti- 

 ciple of '* pello," and translates the passage " banished out of the country 

 and nation where his father was born." 



