Plautus Trinummus 3.3

Henry Thomas Riley (Translator)

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Trinummus. Plautus. Henry Thomas Riley (Translator). London. 1912.

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Current edition Perseus

Trinummus: The Three Pieces of Money (English) (Plautus. The Comedies of Plautus, Volume 1. Riley, Henry Thomas, translator. London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1912.)

Editions (1)
Trinummus Perseus (Plautus. Plauti Comoediae, Volume 2. Leo, Friedrich, editor. Berlin: Weidmann, 1896.) — 3.3 focus

Notes on the current edition

Trinummus: The Three Pieces of Money

1. His father’s signet: The custom of wearing rings among the Romans was said to have been derived from the Sabines. The stones set in them were generally engraved with some design, and they were universally used by both Greeks and Romans for the purpose of a seal. So common was the practice among the Greeks, that Solon made a very wholesome law which forbade engravers to keep the form of a seal which they had sold. In some rings the seal was cut in the metal itself. The designs engraved on rings were various; sometimes portraits of ancestors or friends, and sometimes subjects connected with the mythology or the worship of the Gods. The onyx was the stone most frequently used in rings. The genuineness of a letter was tested, not by the signature, but by the seal appended to it; hence the anxiety of Callicles on the present occasion.
2. The custom-house officers: The portitores were the officers who collected the portorium, or import duty, on goods brought from foreign countries. These portitores, to whom it was frequently farmed, greatly annoyed the merchants by their unfair conduct and arbitrary proceedings. At Rome, all commodities, including slaves, which were imported for the purpose of selling again, were subject to the portorium. The present instance is an illustration of the license of their proceedings, for we can hardly suppose that they were entitled as of right to break open the seals of letters from foreign countries.
3. A sharper: Sycophanta. At an early period there was a law at Athens against the exportation of figs. In spite, however, of prohibitions and penalties; the fig-growers persisted in exporting the fruit. To inform the authorities against the practice was deemed mean and vexatious, so the statute came in time to be looked upon as obsolete. Hence, the term δυκοφαντεῖν, to inform relative to the exportation of figs, came to be applied to all mean and dishonest accusations. In time, the word sycophant came to be applied to a man who was a cunning and villanous character, and who, as it has been justly observed, in Dr Smith’s Dictionary, was a happy compound of the common barretor, informer, pettifogger, busybody, rogue, liar, and slanderer. In fact, he was such a person as we mean by the epithet swindler or sharper. Information being encouraged by the policy of Athens, and the informer gaining half the reward, it was upon this honourable calling that the sycophantae in general thrived They were ready, however, for any other job, however dishonorable, and perjury would not be declined by them if they could obtain their price. They would, consequently be much in the neighbourhood of the Courts of justice; and the Forum, as in the present instance, would not be an unlikely place to meet with them.