Latin Texts & Translations

It is generally believed, but erroneously, that silver was

first employed for making statues of the deified Emperor Augustus, 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 ^[Note] king of Pontus, as also one of Mithridates Eupator, ^[Note] 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, ^[Note] it is considered old-fashioned to wear them made of that metal. ^[Note] I myself, too, have seen Arellius Fuscus ^[Note]—the person whose name was erased from the equestrian order on a singularly calumnious charge, ^[Note] 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: ^[Note] 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 luxuriousness, the baths of our women—bathing as they do in

company with the men—paved with silver to such an extent that there is not room left for the sole of the foot even! Fabricius, I say, who would allow of no general of an army having any other plate than a patera and a salt-cellar of silver. —Oh that he could see how that the rewards of valour in our day are either composed of these objects of luxury, or else are broken up to make them! ^[Note] Alas for the morals of our age! Fabricius puts us to the blush.