Note 50 — A. PERSIUS FLACCUS

-51. Casaubon sees in this passage an imitation of Hesiod, O. et D., 369: δειλὴ δ᾽ ἐνὶ πυθμένι φειδώ (sera parsimonia in fundo est, Sen., Ep., 1, 5). I have followed the old reading, which makes nummus the subject. The personification is in Persius’s vein, as Schlüter correctly remarks. Comp. tacita acerra, v. 5; gemuerunt aera, 3, 39; sapiens porticus, 3, 53; modice sitiente lagoena, 3, 92. Nummi are nursed as children, 5, 149; there is a kind of personification in dolosi nummi, Prol., 12, and literature is full of personified coins, of ‘nimble sixpences,’ ‘slow shillings,’ ‘adventurous guineas.’ Add: ac velut exhausta redivivus pullulet arca | nummus, Juv., 6, 363. Paley (ap. Pretor) suggests that nequiquam may be considered the exclamation of the nummus. This gives so happy a turn that I am almost tempted to put it in the text. It is the familiar story of ‘the bottom dime,’ set to the familiar tune of the ‘Last Rose of Summer.’ Jahn makes the numbskull, not the nummus, the subject, and reads in his ed. of 1843: