CHAP. 54. (12.)—STATUES OF SILVER.
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[1] king of Pontus, as also one of Mithridates Eupator,[2]
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,[3] it is considered old-fashioned
to wear them made of that metal.[4] I myself, too,
have seen Arellius Fuscus[5]—the person whose name was erased
from the equestrian order on a singularly calumnious charge,[6]
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:[7] 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![8] Alas for the morals of our
age! Fabricius puts us to the blush.
1. Meaning the first king of that name. He was son of Mithridates IV.,
king of Pontus.
2. Appian says that there "was a gold statue of this Mithridates, exhibited
in the triumph of Pompey, eight cubits in height," Plutarch speaks
of another statue of the same king, exhibited by Lucullus, six feet in
height.
3. "Compedes." See Chapter 12 of this Book.
4. The translation of this passage is somewhat doubtful. We will, therefore,
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 ornaments
for their shoes, of silver, because the rigour of the statute provided
in that case will not permit them to weare the same of gold."
5. 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.
6. Of an improper intimacy with his pupils.
7. Rings of silver being passed through the prepuce. This practice is
described by Celsus, B. vii. c. 25.
8. "Videret hinc dona fortium fieri, aut in hæc frangi."