Note 1, 89 — A. PERSIUS FLACCUS (continued 3)
Reading edition
89. cantas? ‘you sing, do you?’—fracta te in trabe pictum: Shipwrecked men appealed to charity by carrying about pictures of the disaster which had overtaken them. Comp. 6, 32. Si fractis enatat exspes | navibus, aere dato qui pingitur, Hor., A. P., 20, and Juv., 14, 302. Trabe is the wrecked vessel as it appears in the picture, although it is possible that the painting may have been put on a broken plank of the ship, in order to heighten the pathos. So Jahn.