THE MEANING OF " VERTERE POLLICEM."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—It is interesting to find from your article, "The Last Sensation," that the belief that the Romans turned down their thumbs when they wished for the death of a gladiator is not yet extinct. It is evidently so intended also in Gerome's celebrated picture ; the expression of the faces being clearly bloodthirsty, but every thumb turned down.
That the signal for sparing was premere pollicein (Pliny, H. N., 28, 25), and for killing vertere pollicem (Juvenal, iii., 36), is beyond all question. But the exact gesture intended is, unfor- tunately, not clear. Professor Mayor explains vertere, "to turn towards the breast, as a signal for stabbing ;" premere," to turn downwards, as a signal for dropping the sword." And this explanation, though it lacks direct authority, has the advantage of giving a plausible reason for each gesture. But other authorities (see Professor Wilkins on Horace, Ep. i., 18, 66) take premere of some form of closing the thumb, while from a passage in Appuleius it seems certain that the infestus pollez, or signal for death, might be an upturned thumb.
The result, then, is not as clear as could be wished, but this at least is certain : that if the Romans ever turned down their thumbs, it was a signal for mercy, not for blood. But on the whole, the antithesis of the closed or protruded thumb is per- haps more probable.—I am, Sir, G. E. JEANS.
Shorwell Vicarage, Newport, I. W., Hay 28th.
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