Chap. 60.] FRUGALITY OF TlIK ASCIENT8. 133 



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

 ten thousand. As to the fact that an ancient warrior,'' 5 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 tiling that would appear quite fabulous at the 

 present day. 2 * The same, too, with the instance of Catus 

 JKlius, 37 who, when consul, after being found by the ^Etolian 

 ambassadors taking his morning meal 3 " oil 1 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, witli the exception of two drinking. 

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

 valour, by L. Paulus, 3 * his father-in-law, on the conquest of 

 King Terse 'us. 



AVe read, too, that the Carthaginian ambassadors declared 

 that no people lived on more amicable terms among them- 

 selves than the Itomans, for that wherever they had dined 

 they had always met with the same 10 silver plate. And yet, 

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

 of a Roman of equestrian rank at A relate," a member, too, of 

 a family, on the paternal side, that v;as graced with the fur, 12 

 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 ! 



35 In allusion to tho case of P. Cornelius Rufinus, the consul, who 

 denounced in the senate by tlio censors C. Fabricius Lu>einus and Q. -Erni- 

 lius lliiftts, for being in possession of u certain quantity of silver plate. 

 Tbis story is also referred to in B. xviii. c. 8, where toj pounds is the 

 quantity mentioned. 



' M This is said ironically. 



37 Sextus JKliiis Pa'tus" Cutus, Consul B.C. 198. 



3S i4 Prandentem." 39 L. Paul us JKmilius. 



40 It being bnt from house to house. This, no doubt, was said ironi- 

 cally, and as a sneer at their poverty. 



* l Now Aries. It was made a military colony in tbe time of Augustus. 

 See 15. iii. c. /5, and 11. x. c 57. 



42 *' lYllitum." There has boon considerable doubt as to the weaning 

 of this, but it is most probable that the " privilege of the fur," or ii: 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 pa>sige "banished out of the r.-untry 

 aud nation, where his father was bom." 



