Chap. 51.] STATUES OP SILVER. 137 



first employed for making statues of the deified Emperor 

 A Ligustus, at a period when adulation was all the fashion : 

 for I find it stated, that in the triumph celebrated by Pompeius 

 Magnus there was a silver statue exhibited of Pharnaces, the 

 first^'' king of Pontus, as also one of Mithridates Eupator," 

 besides chariots of gold and silver. 



Silver, too, has in some instances even supplanted gold ; for 

 the luxurious tastes of the female plebeians having gone so far 

 as to adopt the use of shoe-buckles of gold,^^ it is considered old- 

 fashioned to wear them made of that metal. ^^ I myself, too, 

 have seen Arellius Fuscus'^'^ — the person whose name was erased 

 from the equestrian order on a singularly calumnious charge,''^ 

 when his school was so thronged by our youth, attracted 

 thither by his celebrity — wearing rings made of silver. But 

 of what use is it to collect all these instances, when our very 

 soldiers, holding ivory even in contempt, have the hilts of 

 their swords made of chased silver ? when, too, their scabbards 

 are heard to jingle with their silver chains, and their belts 

 with the plates of silver with which they are inlaid ? 



At the present day, too, the continence of our very pages is 

 secured by the aid of silver f^ our women, when bathing, 

 quite despise any sitting-bath that is not made of silver : 

 while for serving up food at table, as well as for the most 

 unseemly purposes, the same metal must be equally employed! 

 Would that Fabricius could behold these instances of lux- 

 uriousness, the baths of our women — bathing as they do in 



^5 Meaning the first king of that name. He was son of Mithridates IV., 

 king of Pontus. 



6'' Appian says that there " was a gold statue of this Mithridates, ex- 

 hibited in the triumph of Pompey, eight cubits in height." Plutarch speaks 

 of another statue of the same king, exhibited by LucuUus, six feet in 

 height. •'S *' Compedes." See Chapter 12 of this Book. 



69 The translation of this passage is somewhat doubtful. We will, there- 

 fore, subjoin that of Holland, who adopts the other version. " As we 

 may see by our proud and sumptuous dames, that are but commoners and 

 artizans' wives, who are forced to make themselves carquans and such or- 

 naments for their shoes, of silver, because the rigour of the statute pro- 

 vided in that case will not permit them to weare the same of gold." 



"^^ A rhetorician who taught at Rome in the reign of Augustus. The 

 poet Ovid was one of his pupils. His rival in teaching declamation was 

 Porcius Latro. 



'' Of an improper intimacy with his pupils. 



''^ Rings of silver being passed through the prepuce. This practice is 

 described by Celsus, B. vii. c. 25. 



