Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/343

 AN UNACCOUNTABLE BLUNDER.

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��suited Appleton's New American Cy- clopedia, edited by Ripley & Dana, and in Vol. VIII, p. 272, found the following passage : " If a combatant was vanquished, but not killed, his fate depended on the people who turned down their thumbs if they wished him to be spared." Evidently this com- piler did not draw his information from the same misleading sources as Profes- sors Ramsay and Wilkins.

I am at present unable to name the treacherous guide who deluded these gentlemen, and many other writers on this subject. The error they have committed seems extraordinary to any one acquainted with Latin literature. For the benefit of non-classical read- ers, it may now be mentioned that the motto of M. Gerome's painting is bor- rowed from the third satire of Juvenal, w., 36, 37 :

" Munera nunc edunt et verso pollice

vulgi Quemlibet occidunt populariter."

These verses are thus translated by Giflford, who understood correctly the meaning of the phrase, verso pollice :

-• Now they show themselves, and at the

will Of the base rabble raise the sign to kill."

There are some lines by Prudentius, a Christian poet of the fourth century, which may also be here quoted in illustration of the custom described. The writer is describing the conduct of a Vestal Virgin at one of the gladia- torial contests :

"O tenerum mitemque animum ! Consurgit ad ictura ; et quoties victor fer-

ruin Jugulo inserit, ilia Delieias ait esse

suas ; Pectus que jacentis Virgo modesta jubet Converso pollice rumpi."

These lines may be roughly translat- ed as follows :

O tender soul! She rises to each blow, And when the victor stabs his bleeding

foe, The modest Virgin calla him her delight, And with her thumb uplifted bids him

smite."

��It is clear, from the sentence I quot- ed from Pliny, that pre mere pollicem is the phrase used to denote approba- tion ; it is equally clear from Juvenal that vertere pollicem denotes the op- posite, and, although I can not call to mind any passage in the classics where pollice presso is applied to the events of the arena, the phrase, with the meaning I attach to it, may be found in Propertius, 3-1 0-14 — "Et nitidas pre s so pollice finge comas." In a note on a line in Horace (1 Epist., 18-66),

"Fautor utroque tuum laudabit pollice ludun."

the Rev. A. J. Macleane, one of the ablest editors of the Bibliotheca Classi- cal, thus writes : " In the fights of glad- iators the people expressed their ap- probation by turning their thumbs down, and the reverse by uplifting them." He notes also the suggestion of Ruperti, in his edition of Juvenal, that the thumb was pointed upward and inward to the heart as a sign that the fallen man was to be run through then. Macleane and Ruperti are scholars who possess little interest for the general reader. He will prob- ably be better pleased when I make reference to " Whyte Melville's Tale of the Gladiators," a tale which, no doubt, involved careful research in order to insure accuracy of description. In chap. XIX, entitled the " Arena," we read : " Occasionally, indeed, some vanquished champion of more than common beauty, or who had displayed more than common address and cour- age, so wins the favor of the specta- tors that they sign for his life to be spared. Hands are turned outward, with the thumbs pointing to the earth, and the victor sheaths his sword, and retires with his worsted antagonist from the contest ; but more generally the fallen man's signal for mercy is neglected. Ere the shout, 'a hit !' has died upon his ears, his despairing eye marks the thumbs of his judges point- ing upward, and he disposes himself to welcome the steel with a calm cour- age worthy of a better cause." So,

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