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Notes on Plautine and Other Latin*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

G.P. Shipp
G.P. Shipp*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Extract

Aug. Serm. 378 distinguished clearly between arrabo and pignus: quando datur pignus reddit homo quod accepit re completa propter quam pignus accepit, arra autem quando datur non recipitur sed super additur ut impleatur. The same distinction is drawn by Isid. Orig. v 25.20. Especially significant is the assumption by Gellius, that there was a usual distinction known to everybody, and his consequent explanation of why Quadrigarius used arrabo where pignus would be expected (xvii 2.21): Cum tantus, inquit, arrabo penes Samnites populi Romani esset. Arrabonem dixit sescentos obsides et id maluit quam pignus dicere, quoniam vis huius vocabuli in ea sententia grantor acriorque est. Quadrigarius used arrabo, I take this to mean, because it expressed more keenly the bitterness felt by the Romans at being forced to leave their fellow-citizens in pawn. (If this is so arrabo would already be in sordidis verbis, though Gellius ascribes this colour of the word to his own times as against those of Quadrigarius.)

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 4 , 1970 , pp. 25 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1970

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References

1 The Greek Law of Sale (Weimar, 1950), pp. 333–429 ‘Arra’ pp. 419–29 (Roman comedy).

2 P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique, s.v. (with literature): ‘… le caractère proprement sémitique du mot n’est pas assuré et il s’agit peut-être d’un mot voyageur du proche Orient’.

3 As Professor Jocelyn suggests, the less exact term is used in the heightened style of the trochaic septenarii.

4 The distinctive feature that the arrabo implies an obligation on the receiver is normal. The exception in Poen. 1359 is negligible. What might appear to be the most distinctive feature of all, that the pignus is returnable but not the arrabo, has an exception in an actual contract: ‘In a papyrus a golden ring given as earnest for the purchase of a slave is returned to the giver after the sale has been concluded’ (Pringsheim, p. 403, with, n.6, a suggestion that ‘its functions as arra have ended’). This also can be applied to Poen. 1359. On the other hand the miles would not be expecting to return his nor Truculentus to get his back. The exception is again trivial, but illustrates one way in which the distinction between arrabo and pignus could become blurred.

5 For Roman interest in pork see, for example, Fraenkel, Plautinisches in Plautus, pp. 145Google Scholar and 248, and for Pseud. 737f., p. 129.

6 Add that the formulaic would hardly have been possible if had been used of pederasty.

7 Ernout and Meillet quote Varro, Ling. 5.95 pecus … a quo pecunia (Mss pecora) universa, quod in pecore pecunia turn pastoribus consistebat. I do not know whether it has been pointed out that exigere pecuniam and prodigus go back to the primary sense of the noun.

8 Professor H. D. Jocelyn suggests as helping to explain the passage that wealthy men pastured animals on the ager publicus and consorted with women like Phronesium, poor men grew crops on small holdings and consorted with common prostitutes (male and female) in the vicus Tuscus (see Cure. 482). Enk (on v. 149) follows Spengel.