Book 28
4.28
Let us now turn to the idle and slothful commons. Among them some who have no shoes are conspicuous as though they had cultured names, such as the Messores, Statarii, Semicupae and Serapini, and Cicymbricus, with Gluturinus and Trulla, and Lucanicus with Porclaca and Salsula, and countless others.Cf. xxviii. 4, 7. Ammianus is satirical, since these names are derived from humble occupations.
4.29
These spend all their life with wine and dice, in low haunts, pleasures, and the games. Their temple, their dwelling, their assembly, and the height of all their hopes is the Circus Maximus. You may see many groups of them gathered in the fora, the cross-roads, the streets,See Class. Phil. xxxii (1937), 49 ff. and their other meeting-places, engaged in quarrelsome arguments with one another, some (as usual) defending this, others that.
4.30
Among them those who have enjoyed a surfeit of life, influential through long experience, often swear by their hoary hair and wrinkles that the state cannot exist if in the coming race the charioteer whom each favours is not first to rush forth from the barriers, and fails to round the turning-point closely with his ill-omenedPerhaps implying that magic arts have been used against him; but see crit. note. In general, cf. Hor., Odes, i. 1, 4 f., metaque fervidis evitata rotis. horses.
