CHAP. 6.—THE SEVERITY OF THE ANCIENTS IN REFERENCE TO CHAPLETS.
Indeed the rules upon this point were remarkably severe.
L. Fulvius, a banker,[1] having been accused, at the time of
the Second Punic War, of looking down from the balcony[2]
of his house upon the Forum, with a chaplet of roses upon
his head, was imprisoned by order of the Senate, and was not
liberated before the war was brought to a close. P. Munatius, having
placed upon his head a chaplet of flowers taken
from the statue of Marsyas,[3] was condemned by the Triumviri to be
put in chains. Upon his making appeal to the
tribunes of the people, they refused to intercede in his behalf
—a very different state of things to that at Athens, where
the young men,[4] in their drunken revelry, were in the habit,
before midday, of making their way into the very schools of
the philosophers even. Among ourselves, no such instance of
a similar licentiousness is to be found, unless, indeed, in the
case of the daughter[5] of the late Emperor Augustus, who, in
her nocturnal debaucheries, placed a chaplet on the statue[6]
of Marsyas, conduct deeply deplored in the letters of that
god.[7]
1. Or "money-changer," "argentarius."
2. "E pergulâ suâ." Scaliger thinks that the "pergula" was a part
of a house built out into the street, while, according to Ernesti, it was a
little room in the upper part of a house. In B. xxxv. c. 36, it clearly
means a room on the ground-floor.
3. In the Fora of ancient cities there was frequently a statue of
this mythological personage, with one hand erect, in token, Servius
says (on
B. iv. 1. 58 of the Æneid), of the freedom of the state, Marsyas having been
the minister of Bacchus, the god of liberty. His statue in the Forum of
Rome was the place of assembly for the courtesans of that city, who used
to crown it with chaplets of flowers. See also Horace i. Sat. 6. 1. 120;
Juvenal, Sat. 9. l. 1 and 2; and Martial,ii. Ep. 64. l. 7.
4. Cujacius thinks that Pliny has in view here Polemen of Athens, who
when a young man, in his drunken revelry, burst into the school of
Xenocrates, the philosopher, with his fellow-revellers, wearing his
festive garland on his head. Being arrested, however, by the
discourse, he stopped
to listen, and at length, tearing off the garland, determined to enter on a
more abstemious course of life. Becoming an ardent disciple of
Xenocrates, he ultimately succeeded him at the head of the school.
The passage as given in the text, from its apparent incompleteness,
would appear to be in a mutilated state.
5. Julia. See B. vii. c. 46.
6. Thus acknowledging herself to be no better than a common courtesan.
7. "Illius dei."