Note 60 — Chapter VI

The illustrations from the practice of keeping accounts, from banking and business operations, and the references to law forms, such as the mode of pleading a case by sponsio60, would come home to the experience and habits which were fostered more in Rome than in any other ancient community61. Though the Romans never were a mercantile community, like the Carthaginians or the Greek States in their later days, yet from the earliest times they understood the uses of the accumulation and skilful application of capital. Another large class of metaphors, generally expressive of some form of roguery, and taken from the trade of various artisans—such as the smith, carpenter, butcher, weaver, etc.62—speaks to the popular as well as the national characteristics of his dramas. If these metaphorical phrases had been mere translations, they would, as thus applied, have had no meaning to a Roman audience. They must have been more or less of slang phrases, formed by and for the people, and suggested by an intimate familiarity with many varieties of trickery and swindling on the one hand, and with the skill and trade of various classes of artisans on the other.