[1861] Ignobilitas. Cic., Tusc., v., 36, "Num igitur ignobilitas aut humilitas ... sapientem beatum esse prohibebit?"
[1862] Vescum. Ovid explains the word. Fast., iii., 445, "Vegrandia farra coloni. Quæ male creverunt, vescaque parva vocant." Cf. Virg., Georg., iii., 175, "Et vescas salicum frondes." Lucret., i., 327, "Vesco sale saxa peresa." Nonius explains it by "minutus, obscurus." Gerlach omits the last words of the Fragment.
[1863] Gerlach supposes Popilius Lænas to be meant, who incurred great odium from the manner in which he conducted the inquiry into the death of Tiberius Gracchus.
[1864] Cf. Plaut., Trin., II. iv., 138, "Nam fulguritæ sunt hic alternæ arbores."
[1865] Combibo. "A pot companion." Cic., Fam., ix., 25, "In controversiis quas habeo cum tuis combibonibus Epicureis."
[1866] For the old reading flaci tam, Dusa reads flaccidam; Gerlach, fædatam.
[1867] Nonius explains prosferari by impetrari, which is very doubtful. Scaliger proposes "Nec mihi oilei proferatur Ajax." Gerlach, "Agamemnoni præferatur Ajax," which would connect this Fragment with Fr. 68 and 40, and the following.
[1868] Domuitio (i. e., Domum itio, formed like circuitio). This, probably, also refers to the return of the Greeks from Troy. Imperium imminuimus. Cf. Plaut., Asin., III., i., 6, "Hoccine est pietatem colere imperium matris minuere?"
[1869] This is also an allusion to tragic poets, whose subjects are quite foreign to his taste. Cf. Fr. 40. The allusion is of course to such plays as the Medea of Euripides (the Amphitryo of Plautus, etc.).
[1870] It is not impossible that the reference may be to the custom prescribed by the laws of the xii. tables to persons searching for stolen goods. The person so searching either wore himself (or was accompanied by a servus publicus wearing) a small girdle round the abdomen, called Licium; this was done to prevent any suspicion of himself introducing into the house that which he alleged to have been stolen from him; and that it might not be abused into a privilege of entering the women's apartments for the purposes of intrigue, he was obliged to carry before his face a Lanx perforated with small holes (hence incerniculum), that he might not be recognized by the women, whose apartments the law allowed him to search. This process was called, in law, per lancem et licium furta concipere. It is alluded to by Aristoph., Nub., 485. Cf. Schol. in loc. Fest. in voc. Lanx. Plato, Leg., xii., calls licium χιτωνίσκον.