Quaestiones Romanae

Why do they call such persons as stand convicted of theft or of any other servile offences furciferi?[*](Cf.Life of Coriolanus, chap. xxiv. (225 d).)

Is this also evidence of the carefulness of the men of old? For anyone who had found guilty of some knavery a slave reared in his own household used to command him to take up the forked stick, which they put under their carts, and to proceed through the community or the neighbourhood, observed of all observers, that they might distrust him and be on their guard against him in the future. This stick we call a prop, and the Romans furca (fork):

wherefore also he who has borne it about is called furcifer (fork-bearer).

Why do they tie hay to one horn of vicious bulls to warn anyone who meets them to be on guard?

Is it because bulls, horses, asses, men, all wax wanton through stuffing and gorging? So Sophocles[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 311, Sophocles, Frag. 764; or Pearson, no. 848; Cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1640-1641; Menander, Hero, 16-17 (p. 291 ed. Allinson in L.C.L.).) has somewhere written,

1. You prance, as does a colt, from glut of food,
2. For both your belly and your cheeks are full.

Wherefore also the Romans used to say that Marcus Crassus[*](Cf.Life of Crassus, chap. vii. (547 c); Horace, Satires, i. 4. 34 faenum habet in cornu; longe fuge!) had hay on his horn: for those who heckled the other chief men in the State were on their guard against assailing him, since they knew that he was vindictive and hard to cope with. Later, however, another saying was bandied about, that Caesar had pulled the hay from Crassus: for Caesar was the first to oppose Crassus in public policy and to treat him with contumely.